Prevent Soggy Pastry Bases
A pastry maker's work is never easy: given the fussiness of pastry, there is always something that can go wrong. Yet, pastry makers are some of life's finest artists, always striving to improve and produce amazing creations that taste great and look great. Soggy pastry is a common problem, but it can certainly be avoided through awareness of the cause and methods for prevention.
Steps
- Make the pastry in a cool, clean environment free of wet surfaces. Dry everything before rolling your pastry, and be careful to keep your hands, implements, and surfaces cool at all times. Consider chilling pastry for at least an hour prior to working with it; this helps it to dry out and makes it easier to handle quickly.
- Allow all fillings to cool before adding. Hot and even warm fillings will create steam and moisture that will have nowhere to go but into the pastry. The pastry will reward you with sogginess. Only add cold fillings when making filled pastries.
- Remove excess moisture. There is nowhere for filling to go inside pastry except into the pastry. Excess moisture in a filling will create soggy pastry. Drain moist fillings, or prefer fillings that do not present a moisture challenge.
- Use slits for pies. Pies and pastries with dense fruit or moist veggie fillings will benefit from slits to let out the steam escape during cooking.
- Aim to place your pastry or pie in the lower third of the oven. The idea behind this is to provide adequate time for base cooking without over-browning the top. Alternately, add aluminum foil to the top to prevent fast browning while the base cooks thoroughly.
- Consider blind baking the pastry first. This will often take care of the problem of a soggy base. However, this will not allow you to add a hot filling! There remains a need to always use cold filling, blind baked or not.
- Provide plenty of ventilation when cooling. If you allow your pastry to cool in its bake ware with nowhere for the heat to escape but into the pastry, it is possible that you will end up with soggy pastry post-cooking but be guided by the recipe and remove the pastry from the pastry pan/dish if and when the recipe asks you to do so. Allow the pastry to cool on a wire cooling rack.
Tips
- Alternative Coating for Fruit Tarts is to use melted chocolate, either milk, dark, or white; depending on the desired taste or look. White chocolate adds little taste, but makes a good sealant.
- Always stick to the measurements provided in recipes; they mean it. Deviate and you will pay a price unless you really know what you are doing.
- Slightly beaten egg white can be brushed on the surface of the pastry to act as a "sealant". Prick the base of the pie/pastry/quiche base and brush the egg white over it. Allow it to harden prior to adding the filling.
- Glass based dishes or dull dishes are considered to be best for making pies.
- Diana's Desserts recommends "setting the pie pan on a metal baking sheet during baking also helps prevent soggy crusts."
- Another idea to "coat" the pastry is suggested by The Cool Cook, who coats "the bottom and sides with a thin layer of melted apricot jam (jelly in the US) and allow[s] this to set before adding the fruit." The Cool Cook goes on to suggest some other possible "coating" methods for pastry: equal amounts of sugar mixed with flour; almond meal; or ground semolina.
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