Designed for The Queen's Platinum Jubilee and taking inspiration from a traditional Bakewell Tart, this strawberry and basil frangipane tart is topped with a field of strawberries cut into roses, the national flower of England!
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Pastry Case 101
PERFECTLY.
PUKKA.
PASTRY!
PERFECTLY.PUKKA.PASTRY!
Whether you’re producing a pie, creating a custard tart, or looking for a quiche to quaff, you’re gonna need a decent pastry case! In this guide, I’ll show you my favourite method to crafting the perfect case every time!
Step 1: Tin Things!
As with most things, the success of the end product is largely dependent on the foundation you've laid! In this case, your pastry tin selection is all important! Firstly, you want to make sure you have a tin of the size your recipe suggests. There's nothing worse than carefully crafting your pastry, then realising that you don't have enough pastry to fill your tin, no matter how thin you roll the dough out!
Secondly, I'd suggest whichever tin you use has a loose bottom (watch it!). Traditional pie dishes look lovely, but are really designed for you to serve bakes directly out of, which isn't what we are after in this case. Instead, get yourself a loose bottom tart tin and grease the inside liberally with butter, allowing you to slide your baked pastry case out with ease!
Step 2: Dough it right!
With your tin selected, the next step in baking a perfectly formed pastry case is to have perfectly rolled pastry, and the extent you can achieve this is largely dependent on the consistency of your dough. It's worth remembering that baking is largely a science, and adding too much liquid to your pastry can lead to overly sticky results that you'll never be able to remove from whatever you rolled it out onto!
Should this happen to you, however, you can somewhat rectify the situation by gently kneading extra flour into your dough until it stops being quite so sticky. The end product may be a little tougher and not quite as buttery, but it'll be better than throwing the whole lot away!
Likewise, adding too little liquid can also be an issue, leading to the dough cracking when you try to manipulate it. This can be tricky to solve once the dough has been formed, so I’d suggest that you keep your eyes peeled as you add your liquid and start to bring your dough together. At that stage, simply stirring the mixture with a wooden spoon should be enough to bring most of the dough together and it will just need a little bit pushing together with your hands to smooth it out. If you are having to manipulate the mixture more heavily than that and are finding that it tends to crumble apart, stop straight away and add a little more liquid (I tend to use milk). You can then repeat this process as necessary until you can easily bring the dough together into a smooth consistency.
Step 3: Keeping cool!
Once you have your pastry dough, you need to chill it for at least 30 mins before you roll it out. Chilling the dough helps it firm up and significantly reduces its stickiness, allowing you to roll it out without the dough gluing itself to your rolling pin and tearing. Leave the dough in the fridge too long, however, and it will be nearly impossible to roll out smoothly and will crack!
So, to check if your dough is chilled just enough, press a finger down into it while it's still wrapped in the cling film. It should be soft enough for you to leave an indent, but should put up a bit of resistance, especially when compared to how soft it was before you chilled it. Once unwrapped, the dough should also feel less sticky / a little drier to touch.
Step 4: Rolling! (On the river!)
From here on out, you don't want to take too long in preparing your pastry and getting it into the tin. The reason for this is that we've just chilled our dough to an ideal working temperature, so we want to finish lining the tin before the pastry warms and softens up too much, becoming hard to work with.
Also, to make rolling out your pastry a breeze, I strongly recommend that you invest in a silicone mat, like the one shown in the image below. They are usually pretty inexpensive and the benefits are two-fold: firstly, pastry doesn't tend to stick as easily to the silicone as much as it does to other materials, allowing you to dust it with less flour, thereby reducing the likelihood of you drying out your dough. Secondly, the mat can be lifted away from your worktop, allowing you to manipulate it and peel it away from your rolled pastry, rather than pulling the pastry away from your counter, reducing the likelihood of it tearing.
Ultimately, however, the general process is the same, with or without silicone being involved! You’ll want to start by scattering a little flour over your pastry and the surface you are rolling it out onto. Then, roll your rolling pin over your dough two or three times in a single direction, before gently lifting the dough, rotating it slightly and placing it back down. This helps you roll the dough out into a uniform shape, while reducing the chances of the pastry sticking, as you are regularly lifting it away from the counter before it adheres. You’ll want to repeat this process until the pastry is roughly 3mm thick, around the thickness of a £1 coin.
Step 5: Lining it up!
Now we've gotten the pastry to the ideal thickness, we can take on the risky bit: laying it into the tin! Place the greased tin onto the middle of a baking tray, keeping it close at hand and ready for your pastry!
If you are using a silicone mat, you can lift the mat at one side, place one hand onto the centre of the rolled pastry and essentially tip the pastry off of the mat onto your hand, gently peeling the mat away as you do so. At a certain point, you should have peeled away enough of the pastry for you to let go of the mat and, now using both hands, you can support the pastry and lay it over the top of your tin.
Alternatively, if you have rolled the dough out onto the counter, you have a couple of options. The first option, and possibly the more reliable of the two, is to run a palette knife under pastry to separate it from the counter and then use it to lift one end of the pastry up high enough for you to slide your hand under. You can then gently lift the dough, using the other hand to support it and lay it into the tin.
The second option you often see suggested is to lift the dough at one end and gently roll it up over your rolling pin, peeling the dough away from the counter and gathering it up before you unroll it over the tart tin. Personally, I tend to find this method a little unreliable, as the pulling motion of rolling up the dough can put a little too much stress on it, risking tearing. However, by all means give it a try, as this may be the perfect solution to your personal pastry problems! Likewise, the above recommendations are only those that spring to mind, so feel free to give your own methods a try!
Once you’ve laid your pastry over your tart tin, you’ll want to work quickly to get it it into place. Tart tins have sharp edges which can rip through your pastry if you leave the weight of the dough unsupported for too long, undoing all of the hard work you put in earlier lifting it in one piece!
To get it into position, gently lift a small part of the pastry overhanging the tin, taking its weight and allowing gravity to guide the pastry within the tin down into the bottom edge. At the same time, you can use your free hand to gently push the pastry into that edge and up the side of the tin, fixing it in place and ensuring that there isn’t an air bubble trapped between the pastry and the tin. Repeat this in small sections all the way around the tin until you have successfully filled it, as shown below!
Leave any pastry overhanging the tin where it is (we will trim this off once it’s baked), then place the tray in the fridge for at least 15 mins, or until the pastry is firm to the touch.
Step 6: Pastry love is blind!
Once your pastry is chilled and firm to the touch, it is ready for baking! This chilling step will have solidified the butter in the pastry, making it far less likely that the pastry will melt and slump in the oven before it has chance to bake through!
Prick the base of the tart case liberally with a fork, allowing the pastry to release any air trapped within it while it bakes and thereby preventing our thin and uniform pastry from rising in random places!
From here, you’ll either want blind bake your pastry, or add the filling and head to the oven, depending on what the recipe calls for. Preheat your oven to 180C / 160C fan / Gas Mark 4 (or whatever your recipe suggests) and follow the appropriate instructions below!
To blind bake your pastry, take a piece of baking paper or tin foil large enough to cover the inside of your tart and line the pastry case with it. From here, you can fill the paper/foil with something to weigh down the pastry while it is in the oven; baking beans are a popular option, though I prefer to use uncooked rice instead, as I find it tends to weigh down the pastry a little more uniformly than the larger baking beans do. Place the tin in the oven for 25 mins to blind bake, before removing the tin from the oven, taking out the baking paper/tin foil lining and placing it back in the oven to finish baking for 10 – 15 mins, or until the base of the pastry case in golden brown and dry to the touch. If the edges of the pastry begin to darken a little too much during this time, you can lay a piece of tin foil over the top of the tin to prevent the pastry from burning.
If you are baking the pastry alongside its filling, then fill the pastry case and place it in the oven for 35 – 40 mins. If after around 25 mins the edges of the pastry are already golden brown, lay a piece of tin foil over the top of the tin to prevent the pastry from burning.
Once the pastry case has been baked, you can then neaten up the edges to give it the nice clean finish you desire (and deserve!). Allow the case to cool slightly in the tin for 2-3 minutes, then, set a sharp knife at a 45 degree angle against the far edge the tin, so that you are in position to slice off any pastry sitting above the rim of the tin. You should then be able to gently slice the pastry, lightly pushing the knife away and down against the rim of the tin as you do so to achieve a neat cut against this edge. Rotate the tin slightly and repeat this cutting process until you have a neat flat top to your pastry case!
Ok, so I appreciate that this process isn’t the easiest to understand when written out, so here is a quick video demonstrating exactly what I mean! It should be more apparent here that you’re essentially giving the pastry a shave to get it looking sharp!
Step 7: Remove and rejoice!
So your pastry case is now looking gorgeous and the final step is to remove it from the tin and allow it to cool! This can be pretty nerve-racking, but if you are using a springform tin, as suggested above, then life suddenly becomes much easier!
Place your tin on top of a can to support its bottom, while carefully lowering down the ring, ensuring that you don't twist or bump it and take out some of your pastry case in the process!
Lift the pastry case from underneath, tin bottom included, and place it onto a cooling rack. Gently slide a spatula between the pastry case and the bottom of the tart tin and carefully push the pastry case away until you have exposed enough of the tin bottom for you to grab onto it. You can then slide the bottom of the tin away from the pastry, leaving the tart case on the cooling rack until completely cool! Again, at this stage I’d advise against twisting the pastry too much while using the spatula, as that can cause unnecessary stress on the warm pastry case and cause it to break apart.
And…job done! You have one beautiful piece of pastry, ready to fill, decorate or devour!
I hope these tips and tricks work for you!
If you’re social media savvy, feel free tag me on Instagram at @toofarfletched with your creations!
-Tom 
Comments
Tom
Hi! Thanks for stopping by!
I set up this site to share with you everything I love about baking, so hopefully there’ll be something here you enjoy too!
If you’d like to get in touch, feel free to use the links below!
I set up this site to share with you everything I love about baking, so hopefully there’ll be something here you enjoy too!
If you’d like to get in touch, feel free to use the links below!
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