Flaky pastry

Pretty please with my layers!!!

Right, the cold weather is creeping on us, my husband and I are tired because our son has had a few issues with getting through a whole night without waking up and this morning I was on the phone with my husband who told me that he must have been tired because he was craving a pie and a chocolate milk shake. I thought, well we are having beef for dinner, there is obviously way too much for one dinner, let's make him a pie. So I actually made 3 smaller ones so he can have one tomorrow for lunch and the rest can go in the freezer in case of an emergency.
My craving luckily was for cookies which I happen to have at home... Well, I "borrowed" some of my son's. They are those cute little Gluten and Dairy Free bears with choc chip. They are DELICIOUS so I am also in the process of trying to make them myself... Watch that space.

Anyway, we were talking pies and to make a pie you have to start with the pastry.

I made my own flaky pastry from my trusted Edmonds' cookbook. I was really tempted to taste it, it smelled so nice while it was baking... Let's see if you can resist.

Ingredients:
2 cups of high grade flour (I only had self raising and it worked)
1/4 teaspoon of salt
200g of butter
6 Tablespoons of cold water, approximately

Sift the flour and salt into a bowl. Cut one- quarter of the butter into the flour until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Add sufficient water to mix into a stiff dough.

On a lightly floured board roll out dough to a rectangle0.5- 1 cm thick. With the short end of the rectangle facing you , dot two0 third of the pastry with a third of the remaining butter to within 1 cm of the dough edge. Fold the unbuttered pastry into the middle of the pastry. Fold the buttered section over the folded edge. Seal the edges with a rolling pin and mark the dough with the rolling pin to form corrugations.

Give the pastry a quarter turn. Roll into a rectangle.

Repeat twice until all the butter is used.

Chill the pastry for 5 minutes between rollings if possible.

Use as required for savoury pies and vol au vents.

Makes 500g pastry.

I will post the recipe for the pie itself tomorrow after I get the verdict from the expert.

Happy Baking everyone :)