Well its great having someone like yourself who has baked most of Rose recipes to advise us!

Success!

Pastry came together fine and was SO EASY to make in the processor. Matthew I left it out for an hour as you suggested and was fine to roll. It was clearly too cold on my first attempt. I am thrilled at the result .. we are getting there!!!

I need help with a few issues:

Firstly the pastry sides in the flan tin shrunk badly to about half their original height (it was chilled for an hour). This was in spite of my making an additional edge around the top to cater for shrinkage.

The sides tended to bake much browner than the base -

The base was underdone - and a bit soggy - in spite of the pastry being pricked. I was using weights.

Should I have placed the flan tin on a baking pan or baking stone?

Lastly Rose says pastry should be 1/8th of an inch thick - difficult to estimate this?? Surely thickness will influence baking time?
Was my pastry too thin?

Paul - 19 May 2010 08:36 AM

Success! :-)

Congratulations!  I’ve never made this in a food processor, good to know that you had success with it.

Firstly the pastry sides in the flan ring shrunk badly to about half their original height (it was chilled for an hour).

This has always, always, happened to me, even when the pastry was baked from completely, utterly frozen.  I do three things: first, I build the sides a little higher than I want them to be after baking, making them go up and over the edge whenever possible.  Second, I freeze thoroughly, and third, I make sure the weights at the sides during blind baking go all the way to the top of the side crust. 

The sides tended to bake much browner than the base -

I think that having weights go all the way up the sides (I use dried beans) and using one of the large coffee filters helps, as the weights insulate the side and I fold the coffee filter over the edge so it acts like an edge protector.

The base was underdone - and a bit soggy - in spite of the pastry being pricked. I was using weights

This crust has three baking stages (p. 55):  five minutes at 425, 15-20 minutes at 375, and then the weights and liner are removed and the bare crust is baked another 10-15”.  Did you remember to do the last stage?  With the last stage, go ahead and bake it until it is just about completely done, as most of these crusts don’t get much additional baking after this.

Thank You Julie - I didn’t do the last stage as the crust was already fairly brown. I baked for 20 mins total.

I am still struggling with temps - my two thermometers give readings about 30F difference.
The bottom of the base was brown but the underside under the weights was white but not really soggy. I only have enough for a single layer.

I think I need an edge protector - we don’t have such large filters here so will have to fashion some foil.

How do some bakers manage without weights/rice etc??

I will try again later this week. It has been a good day though - I now have a feeling for the consistency of the dough.
I don’t feel like quite the village idiot!

PS the food processor is sooo easy. I feel like Julia Child when she first discovered it!

I don’t worry about the crust coming together in a ball to roll out when I am doing a cookie crust for a a tart.

It just doesn’t matter, with a rolled pie cust it’s does.  I just dump the crumbs in the tart pan and start mashing them down into an even layer.  I do have one of those small silicon pastry rollers.  I use it to finish it and level it.  Before I used it, I just dumped the crumbs in the tart pan and put a piece of saran or plastic bag over the crust and pressed it down to form the crust while keeping my hands clean.  You could even use something flat like a bottom of a glass.  I hate wearing gloves of any kind so this is my alternative method.  I can then throw away the dirty plastic.

That is interesting! I thought that method was reserved for very fragile crust or a Graham crackers base.
Just shows what one can do if you are an accomplished baker!