My considered recipe for pastry

  • Flour 9 oz.
  • Butter non salted 5 oz.
  • I egg
  • 2 Desert spoons cold water.

  1. Use plain white flour. English flour does not need sieving.
  2. Leave butter out of fridge until it is not vry hard.
  3. Mix butter into flour in food processor until it is the proverbial bread crumbs.
  4. Crack egg and whip lightly with a fork.
  5. Add 2 desert spoons of water to egg whip a little more.
  6. Pour into processor and start machine again.
  7. Soon it will form a ball, stop machine.
  8. Take out pastry, lightly flour ball and wrap in kitchen paper.
  9. Leave at room temperature for a while or even overnight if convenient to start your tart the day before.

Do not put in the fridge.  This makes pastry hard and unworkable.

This pastry rolled out and lifted easily.

I cooked it at Regulo 6, first doing blind baking with beans on cooking paper holding down the pastry for the preliminary cooking.
I then removed the beans and put slices of pears and peaches on the tart and put back in oven to finish cooking.

Madame Rolland came in and started talking when it was almost perfect. I had left it for the final few minutes.
Half an hour later I leapt up smelling the over cooked tart to pull a nearly burned tart from the oven.

I am sure it would have been good. Never mind! so my final instruction…

Use your timer, memory and nose to remove pastry when cooked.