Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Shortcrust Pastry along with all the Shortcrust Pastry containing recipes presented on this site, with 144 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Shortcrust Pastry recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Shortcrust Pastry as a major wild food ingredient.

Shortcrust pastry ranks amongst the most useful and versatile of all pastries. This is a crumbly pastry that's based on the rule of a half fat to flour ratio. To make it, fat (lard, butter or margarine [or a mixture of these]) is rubbed into plain flour to create a loose mixture that is then bound using a small amount of water before being rolled out. The 'shortness' of the pastry describes its 'light and crumbly' texture and in general adding more fat will make the pastry 'shorter' but far more difficult to handle. However, care must be taken to ensure that fat and flour are blended thoroughly before liquid is added so that the degree of glutenization is reduced. Also overworking the dough s the gluten strands, creating a product that is chewy, as opposed to 'short' and this should also be avoided.