this was my rhubarb forest in June 2012. DP is a confirmed fan of rhubarb crumble and apple pies
Making pastry with oil
Before we go into making any of the dishes involving pastry, a word about making it. I have been making pastry since I was a child as it was one of the ways Mum made things stretch, meat pies with not much meat in them and lots of vegetables, apple pies to fill us up and rhubarb pies with rhubarb from the garden together with custard so thick you could slice it.
Mmmmmm (Birds custard that is, not proper egg custard :))
Which fat to use?
Usually when making pastry, some kind of solid fat is used as shortening. Butter, lard, hard margarine or blocks of shortening sold especially for making pastry. But on the Meal Plans on this site, we don’t usually have enough solid fat to spare to make pastry with, so I will be using a technique I learned, to make pastry using the vegetable oil that we will have available
When I was involved with the £100 a month plan over on www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk , and we needed to make pastry, but only had oil, no solid fat, I was up for the challenge.
How To Make It
If you are familiar with making pastry, you will know that usually you have to add the minimum of liquid to keep a pastry short, otherwise it can go rubbery and unpleasant. With oil pastry, my first thought was that it wouldn’t need any liquid as the oil would provide all the moisture needed. My goodness! It was like trying to roll out a crumble topping!
After a lot of experimentation, I found that if I added almost as much water in ml as the oil, the flour sort of slurped it all up and became very compliant, rolling out beautifully.
So when you make this kind of pastry, put the flour and oil in a bowl, and almost as much water as oil, and just gently stir it with a spoon.
You can use this kind of pastry for most recipes using pastry. I’ve used cheapest vegetable oil, mild olive oil and extra virgin olive oil, all of which worked really well
Ingredients
- 100 ml water up to 100ml, you may not need it all
- 100 ml oil 11p
- 200 g flour self raising, 6p
Instructions
- After a lot of experimentation when creating this recipe, I found that if I added almost as much water in ml as the oil, the flour sort of slurped it all up and became very compliant, rolling out beautifully.
- So when you make this kind of pastry, put the flour and oil in a bowl,
and add almost as much water as oil, and just gently stir it with a spoon.
- Add the water bit by bit, it will look a little like a batter at first.
If you add too much water, the pastry is easily rescued by adding a
little more flour, but if you are following the weekly plans, you may
not have enough flour to spare from the weekly bag to do this and still
have enough to make the other flour requiring dishes for the week, so
go slowly.
- The flour will bind everything together and you will have a soft ball of pastry dough, ready to roll out.
Equipment Needed
Notes
Got a great recipe? How about submitting it to appear on Thrifty Lesley!
I just use water straight from the cold tap
Most pastry are made with cold water. What temperature should the water be?
Amazing thank u x
Hooray! I’m so pleased it worked for you
My pastry never ever worked, – until I discovered and tried your recipe with oil. You’ve made me a star! It works! So far, one double crust pie using leftovers which just slid beautifully out of the tin, and a quiche. Fabulous, easy and foolproof. Many thanks.
Ooh, lovely. Look forward to reading what you write
Hi Lesly
Thank you for this recipe for pastry. It have revolutionised my cooking. I have put a link to your site on my blog. I will be shortly doing a blog post on oil pastry and will of course link across to you.
Ceri – I haven’t yet. I’ll try it and let you know what it’s like
Hi has anyone made this with gluten free flour? Thanks Ceri
Thanks….perfect…..
Hi Mark, it’s the same ratio as a shortcrust pastry. So for a double crust 20 cm pie, it would be 200g self raising flour, 100ml oil (not grams) and start with 100ml of water, adding 75ml to start with and see how it goes
There are no measurements…. Flour, oil, water..what ratios….?