How to Make Raised Crust Pastry

I used to think pastry was pastry. Well maybe, I thought, there are two kinds. You know, ordinary pastry and the flaky stuff you find in sausage rolls. My old grandmother's recipe book quickly taught me that was a silly idea.

In fact, there are a lot of different ways to make pastry. The method you choose depends on what the pastry is going to be used for. This week, Blighty's British Recipes newsletter subscribers are going to hear about my attempts to make a genuine, British-style pork pie. Pork pies require a special kind of pastry called "raised crust" pastry.

Many pies are shallow. The base of the pie is a "pastry shell" supported inside an aluminum tray or pie tin. Pork pies are deep and are usually made without any means of external support. The pastry has to be robust enough to hold together while it is filled with meat and baked. That is where raised crust pastry enters the stage. Here is how to make it:

Ingredients

• 1 cup of McDougall's Plain Flour
• 2 tablespoons Atora Light Vegetable Suet
• 1/4 cup of water
• 1/4 cup of milk
• Salt

Preparation

• Boil the liquids, add the Atora suet and salt and allow the fat to completely dissolve
• Put the flour into a mixing bowl and make a hollow in the centre
• Pour the liquid into the hollow and thoroughly mix to make a stiff dough
• Knead and roll the dough on a floured board
• Cut out two circular pieces of pastry, each large enough to generously cover the ends of a jam jar
• Mould the remainder of the dough into a cylindrical shape around the walls of the jar, then carefully slide the jar out
• Moisten one of the circular pieces of dough and attach it to the base, ensuring that you make a very good seal

You now have a raised crust pie shell ready for making a Blighty's British Recipes pork pie. We'll share with you how to do that in the next post on this blog.

The flour and Atora Light Vegetable Suet are available at Blighty's Tuck Store and by mail order if you don't happen to live near the store. If you would like to be notified when new recipes are published (usually about once per week) you can subscribe to Blighty's British Recipes newsletter by email.