Are you a passionate baker eager to showcase your baking skills? Have you thought of opening your own bakery business but don’t know what to start with? Then there is one thing you must accomplish—mastering the various types of pastries.
Every baker should be a master of these pastries to become a renowned pastry chef. This blog is about the minute details of the types of pastries.
What is pastry?
Pastry is a delightful creation made from simple baking ingredients like flour, water, and butter. It serves as the perfect base for a wide range of baked goodies, from sweet cakes to savory pies. The light and flaky texture of pastries can vary depending on the type of pastry you’re baking!
But the real fun is in the process of making pastries. It takes some real patience to roll out the dough just right and shape it into a crust or layers. Then comes the best part: filling it up with delicious ingredients or a special baked treat of your choice. And voila! Your pastry is ready to enjoy!
The best part? You can easily make these pastries at home as a perfect treat for any celebrations or parties. They have the power to instantly lift your spirits and are a popular dessert in global cuisines worldwide.
Various types of pastries
If you are not from the baking world, you may be surprised to know there are more types of pastries than cakes. From crunchy to creamy, every type of pastry exists to delight you in its own ways!
1. Puff Pastry (Pâte Feuilletée)
Puff pastry, characterized by a light and airy layering left after baking, is made using a method wherein butter is folded in and rolled tightly with the dough several times to give a flaky appearance with hundreds of thin layers. Puff pastry is suitable for either sweet or savory: vol-au-vents, Napoleons, palmiers, etc. The secret hack to get a perfect puff pastry is to keep the dough cold so that butter won’t melt before baking.
2. Puff Pastry Variants
Viennoiseries are a category of pastries midway between bread and pastry. These typically have laminated dough, enriched with butter, eggs, and milk. Pain aux raisins is a popular coiled pastry with custard and dried fruit. Brioche is another great use for this dough; it’s a rich buttery bread, usually shaped into loaves or buns. Whereas these pastries use techniques similar to those of other laminated doughs, their fine ingredients make them soft and somewhat bread-like rather than crisp.
3. Shortcrust Pastry
The shortcrust is one of the most versatile pastries, and it is a staple choice for tarts, quiches, and pies. It has a crumbly texture and has been realized from flour, butter, and a small quantity of water mixed. The fat is rubbed into the flour, which produces a tender, crumbly texture when baked. Professional bakers love to bake this because shortcrust pastry can be widely used in making fruit pies, savory tarts, and cookies. If you want to broaden their savory and sweet baking repertoire, you must master this pastry making.
4. Choux Pastry
The pastry, choux, differs from other types of pastry dough. It is piped, rather than rolled out, and baked to form hollow, light shells. Choux pastry is a term given to the French pastry dough used in making éclairs and cream puffs or profiteroles; it is typically made with flour, butter, water, and eggs.
The moisture content of this dough greatly allows it to inflate in the cooking process, thereby creating the famous puff. For all students who want to pursue French patisserie, it becomes of crucial importance to get the perfect choux pastry.
5. Filo Pastry
Filo pastry is basically paper-thin sheets, and when baked, they will develop a beautiful crispiness. It is frequently used in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern desserts, such as baklava, or savory dishes like spanakopita; it requires gentle handling because of its tender hand. Mastering a filo pastry is indeed a skill worth bragging about among professional bakers eager to expand their menus further.
6. Danish Pastry
The Danish pastry is made from a yeast dough rolled with butter to produce a pungently soft and flaky pastry. These pastries usually have a delightful top of fruits, cream cheese, or nuts, great as a breakfast for people around the world.
This pastry requires perfect timing and a balanced amalgamation of yeast fermentation with the deliciousness of butter. Such bakers who can attune their art to create various Danish pastries are sure to impress the customers.
7. Sweet Pastry (Pâte Sucrée)
Sweet pastry, or pâte sucrée, is the ultimate dough for desserts requiring a richer and slightly sweet touch. The concentration of fruit tarts, custard pies, and most other sweet treats must include this dough based on the sweetness of sugar given to the dough, which makes it crumbly and tender. It is used in high-end dessert creations today by professional bakers, thereby making it a technique every serious professional should have in their arsenal.
8. Sand Pastry (Pâte Sablée )
Pâte sablée, which means “sand-like” in French, is a sweet and crumbly dough that, although similar to pâte sucrée, boasts a more prominent shortbread-like texture. It is most commonly used for tarts and cookies that require a fragile, crumbly foundation. Pâte sablée tart shells are often filled with delicate ingredients like custard or chocolate. Sablé is a simple but delicious French butter cookie made with the same dough.
9. Rough Puff Pastry
Similar to traditional puff pastry but easier to prepare, rough puff pastry combines flour and butter in a way that produces flaky layers without numerous folds. It’s perfect for sausage rolls, turnovers, and galettes. These chefs, where some have to work fast, look for lay back puff because of the high puff pastry texture itself. A chef armed with information on puffing and rough puffing is a highly flexible Alan Rickman in the kitchen.
10. Flaky Pastry
Flaky pastry is like puff pastry but is made in an easier method. It has fewer layers and a less dramatic rise. In preparing flaky pastry, the butter is cut into the dough in larger chunks, resulting in a different and flaky texture. This pastry is usually employed for savory dishes such as pasties—Great British pastry filled with meat and vegetables—and cheese straws—thin strips of pastry sprinkled with cheese and baked to a crisp.
11. Hot Water Crust Pastry
Hot water crust pastry is a very firm pastry that is able to stand properly for a few hours (even if left unattended!). Used for savory pies, this is a kind of pastry made by melting fat (usually lard) in hot water and then mixed with flour in order to create a moldable dough by hand. This type of pastry is fit for pies that must contain a lot of filling and can hold their shape, such as pork pies and traditional British game pies. Hot water crust pastry is less flaky and much more substantial than other pastries, so it serves well in hearty filling.
12. Croissant Dough (Laminated Dough)
Croissant dough, like puff pastry, is a laminated dough but contains yeast, lending a soft, airy crumb with flaky layers in the baked product. The final dough is used to produce a classic French croissant, which is a buttery crescent-shaped pastry. Another delightful pastry can be crafted from this dough, known as Pain au chocolat, with chocolate wrapped in the dough.
Yeast in the dough provides a fluffy finish, distinguishing itself from puff pastries, and, while it isn’t exactly a foil-pastry layer-in-casing, it folds and rolls out several times.
Become a Professional Pastry Chef with Whitecaps
So by now, you must be clear that dough is what makes the difference! The same ingredients but with a different recipe can let you taste various types of pastries. Isn’t the art and science of baking truly wonderful?
But a pastry chef needs a lot of experience to create “the perfect pastries.” You may have also heard that surviving in the bakery industry is challenging. But there is no failure that can beat hard work and skills.
Professional baking courses by Whitecaps can help you achieve success in pastry art and also provide necessary campus assistance like France internships. Join Whitecaps now to sit tight and enjoy the life of a baking entrepreneur!
