Painting railings.

  How can I look you in the eye without giving you a massive apology for last night's shit-show of a blog post. It was inexcusable gibbering gibberish without flow or structure and couldn't have... (We get the idea. Just get on with it. -Ed.)

  Today we're going to talk pastry, but don't be hard on yourself if you find pastry difficult because it's something that can take a lifetime to master. Firstly, I mentioned yesterday that as a rule of thumb, pastry is two parts flour to one part butter. (You'll also need a bit of water to bring it together.)  It is possible to change the proportions and add extra butter. This gives a richer pastry. To give you a sense of this, imagine eating a piece of pastry versus a piece of pastry spread with butter and, well you get the idea.

  Here's another example that will help you understand pastry more. A dough made with flour and water which gets baked will give you something like a Jacob's cream cracker. At school we tried to eat a stack of five in under three minutes without water. It's impossible but you're welcome to try and if you do, please post a video of yourself. Slather one with butter however and it's a lot more palatable, delicious even. With pastry, you're baking the butter in. And the more butter you add... Actually, to give you an idea of butter rich pastry, think of puff pastry or croissant, which are turbocharged with butter.

  Another way you can change the texture of pastry is by combining the ingredients differently. To make a crumbly shortcrust, you gently rub the butter into the flour. In effect you are breaking the butter into smaller and smaller pieces and covering each piece with flour. You want to start with very cold butter, cut it into small chunks before rubbing gently with cold fingers and handle it as little as possible. Why? Because you don't want the butter to melt. That will give you something else.

  Where the classic shortcrust is crumbly, another variant will give you a crisp pastry that you'd recognise as a French tart shell, known as pate brisee. This time you start with room temperature butter and mix in the flour thoroughly so they're fully incorporated. If you add sugar to the butter first you'll end up with shortbread. As you know, there are loads more pastry types but I wanted to start with these as they're the simplest and the one's you're most likely to have tried as a kid. Come back tomorrow for more pastry shenanigans and a reply to Mr. Scoggis' comment about Marco Polo.

Kirk out

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