There is just so much joy in devouring someone elses cooking, and everything ALWAYS tastes better that way. Don't beat yourself up too much!

Note to self: Make a fried egg and tomato toasted sandwich today.

Just an update. My Pasty 'Pastry' is just consistently miserable. I ended up buying Tenderflake frozen pie shells to use, but the dough is too flimsy and doesn't have the strength to hold the hearty filling, so I ended up just making a meat pie, which had a delicious taste.

I stumbled upon an interesting website of a Brit in Canada and his recipes seem to be adapted somewhat to our Canadian ingredients. Is his pasty method or some ingredients he uses traditional? Not at all, but I'm going to give it a whirl anyway.

He certainly admits it's not the way authentic ones are made, but it works for him and I'm good with that. He's got a nice Best of British and English Tea Time section as well, so I thought I'd share this find.

That Melton Mowbray Pork Pie recipe will be next on my list, once I conquer the Pasty.

http://www.robertsplace.ca/recipes/cornishpasty2.htm

I tried a quick and easy pasty pastry recipe from "Jamie's Great Britain" book and it came out a treat.

500g plain flour
250g cold unsalted butter
pinch of salt
approx 200 ml water
1 beaten egg for brushing.

I shoved the flour, salt and the butter (cut into bits) into the blender machine with the plastic "blade" and whizzed until it was breadcrumb like, and then slowly added the water until I had a nice ball of dough. I was too lazy to rub the butter into the flour by hand that day.

Jamie says not to work and knead the dough a lot, just roll out to the thickness of a £1 coin and use immediately.

This quantity made 6 large pasties and the pastry really was good.

Pastry can be a fickle Mistress, The most important factor is keeping it cool, I freeze the butter and grate it into the flour. make sure your not using the palms of your hand try to just use your fingertips. I also put a large roasting try into the fridge and turn it upside down to use as my surface.
The water should also be Ice cold. it should be closer in color to white rather than a yellow colour that comes from melted buter.

My Bowl was cold, my fats were nicely frozen and grated, water icy cold, my hands were cold - I even chilled the flour! . The first time I made it quickly by hand and the second attempt, I used Ramsay's youtube shortcrust method in making it very quickly in the food processor, but to my chagrin, I found my dinosaur processor bowl was a little on the small side, and it was admittedley too crowded and the dough became overworked, I fear.

I know that conversions may have been a slight issue, but I researched it fully to understand how that works and came across a conversion of grams for specific ingredients (flour, fats, etc.).

I was also surprised not to find frozen pastry dough that you can just roll out, hence my frozen pie shell purchases.

I think I'm going to head to Canadian Tire and pick up a digital food scale to make it easier for my pea-brain to follow, as I see many British recipes I'd like to try.

Always great suggestions!

Have you ever tried the recipe on the Tenderflake lard package? I've had trouble with pastry in the past myself and seemed to have the best luck with that one.

Thanks, Curleytops.

I tend to be an overthinker at times () and wished for a proper technique, but I have now lowered my lofty goals to meet my need to get the darned things made.

For some reason I keep thinking these heavy brutes needed a hefty pastry and my pie dough, which I have no problems with, wasn't a true 'shortcrust'.

Maybe I shall just do the good old pie-dough.

Yeah me too, lovely light pastry!