Flaky pastry is a short cut to creating a pastry crust almost similar to the lengthy Puff pastry. This recipe may be halved with ease. But it is advised to do the full recipe due to the fact that it freezes well. There are a few factors to consider when preparing this pastry, and the rules for this pastry can also be applied to the other categories of pastries like: puff-, short crust, danish and croissants.

Guidelines:
1. All ingredients should be kept very cold.
2. Never over work pastry dough, it is NOT bread dough!
3. Single fold: When dough is folded into three parts. This is the way how the layers are created.
4. When resting dough before rolling: press flat into a chilled baking sheet. cover with cling film and refrigerate.
5. For this recipe it is important to cut the butter into cubes and not grating it. In the end before adding the liquids, the size of the butter should be like pea’s. If margarine is used PLEASE read the LABEL! You should work with aa 80% fat content!

Dusting flour
140 g flour
10 ml creme of tartar

Dough
1 kg of cake flour or all purpose flour
700 g butter or margarine (80% fat conent), cut into thumb size cubes
10 g cornstarch (maizena)
10 g salt (please not for international users to increase the salt because South African salt is way much saltier, so go for 15-20 g)
500 g ice cold water
20 g ice cold lemon juice

Place a baking sheet into the freezer and get a large piece of parchment paper out to cover the pan.

Sift the flour with dry ingredients. Mix with whisk to ensure all ingredients is mixed 100%.

Add butter and work only by hand into the flour until it is the size of peas. You still need to see the butter pieces. These pieces will get smaller and flatter as the rolling process continues. These fat particles will ensure layers lifting to create the flakes. If the pieces of fat is too small the rendered crust will be tough and not flaky at all.

Make a well in the flour and add the liquids. Mix with a dough scraper all the ingredients to come together. Turn out onto surface and kneed for one minute to get the dough to come together.

Line the chilled baking sheet with the parchment paper and put some of the dusting flour onto the parchment paper. Put the dough onto the baking sheet and cover, roll flat and set into refrigerator for an hour or more to help the butter to set.

Roll the dough, and fold both ends towards one another to the halfway mark. Like a book. Then close the book by folding again the douhg onto itself. Repeat once. Let it rest in the refrigerate for 30 minutes and repeat two more times. So in total 6 single folds done.

To Freeze this dough:
1. You can freeze the dough by the 6th single fold. Before using let the dough defrost in the fruit section of your refrigerator over night and let it the rest for another hour at room temperature.
2. Or option two is to roll the dough like shop baught dough in 3-5 mm thickness and roll the dough into a log. BUT don’t stretch the dough while doing so. Thaw the dough as described in step 1. www.annelienpienaar.co.za