Pastry tips

Here are a few tips about working with pastry that have helped me:

• Make sure you chill it well before you try to work with it. Otherwise it'll stick to everything.
• Flour your rolling pin, work surface, and hands.
• To get the pastry to roll evenly, work it into a nice round ball on the work surface, then roll it from the centre outwards, in all different directions. Roll the pin off the edge of the pastry each time, or it might stick to the pin and break.
• To get the pastry from the worktop to the tin, roll it onto the pin, then roll it off over the tin.
• Don't stretch the pastry too much in the tin. You want it to be tucked neatly into the corners of the tin, but if you stretch it too much the sides will shrink and whatever you're going to put in the pastry will overflow. Something that has worked for me is to make the sides of the pastry case a bit thicker than the base. I do this by pushing the pastry into the corners of the tin, then folding down the excess which is hanging over the edge of the tin to make a thick crust.
• Blind bake the pastry to stop it going soggy. The idea is that the blind-baking will dry out the bottom and prevent the filling soaking into the pastry. To blind bake, prick the base of the pastry all over with a fork, line the pastry case with foil or baking paper, fill it with baking beans or pasta or rice (concentrating especially on the edges), bake it for 5-10 minutes, then remove the foil and beans and bake for another 10 or so minutes until it is golden and cooked. When you're cooking the filled pastry, if the case looks like it's going too brown, lightly cover the tart with foil.
• If it all goes wrong, use uncooked sweet pastry as a topping for a fruit crumble, or savoury pastry on top of some vegetables for a crumble-like side dish.

The more times you use pastry, the easier it will become.