Van Kraayenburg - Making dough : recipes and ratios for perfect pastries

Pastries, and the doughs that give them life, have a daunting reputation. Their intricate construction, precise recipes, and time-consuming techniques can keep even the most adventurous home cooks from attempting to make them. But they are not as complicated as they sound!

Id like to share a secret that professional pastry chefs have known for years: you need to know only a dozen dough recipes to be able to make countless pastries. Galettes, hand pies, pot pies, and crackers all use the same recipe for pie dough. Doughnuts, cinnamon rolls, brioche tte, and rolls can be made from brioche dough. And the same recipe for shortcrust dough is the foundation for savory tarts, dessert tartlets, pop tarts, and even some cookies. Regardless of the application, the methods for preparing each of these twelve doughs remains the same; a croissant is a croissant, no matter your time zone.

With the help of this book you can master these twelve basic pastry doughs: biscuit, scone, pie, shortcrust, sweetcrust, pte choux, brioche, puff pastry, rough puff pastry, croissant, danish, and phyllo. You will also find instructions for 82 pastries and variations that use the basic doughs, plus 30 recipes for fillings, toppings, and glazes. Mix and match the doughs, techniques, fillings, toppings, and sauces for innumerable possible pastriesall from just a handful of simple dough recipes.

Ive always been obsessed with the inherent simplicity of baking. And Ive been baking for as long as I can remember, trying to capture and create the magic of some of my favorite pastries. Their simple constructionoften nothing more than butter, flour, and waterbecomes the base for so many flavors, a doorway to a never-ending variety of pastries.

The first time I baked was in the backyard. My primary ingredient? Mud. I can remember the mix of defeat and pride on my mothers face every time she had to buy a new pie pan because one of hers had mysteriously disappeared. The first time I baked in a real kitchen, it was, to my parents disapproval, without adult supervision. I vaguely remember adding more baking soda than flour to my concoction and using a few Cheerios for texture. The result came out green.

Eventually, my baking exploits became more commonplace. Everyone in my family had a sweet tooth, and indulging it became a family affair. And though in the beginning our cookies came from plastic containers, our biscuits from cardboard tubes, and our cakes from boxed mixes, we slowly began to expand our horizons. Soon we tried biscuits from scratch. Cakes whose batter we mixed according to a recipe. Eventually, our cookies more often came from the ingredients in our fridge and pantry, not a squishy tube. My father started making his own crepes. But our pastriesboy, did we like our pastrieswere purchased from local bakeries and pastry shops. We never dared to make those from scratch. We didnt even prepare our own pie or tart crusts. They were simply too difficult. Or so we thought.

After nearly a decade of living, and cooking, on my ownmissing home-cooked meals and desserts from scratchI began to explore the world of pastries that I once found too intimating and attempted to make homemade pastries easy and accessible. Im glad I did, and I hope you will be, too. Lets get started!