[Sca-cooks] Flour Recommendation?

[Terry Decker]

Of the Mixture of Paste.    Your course Wheat-crust should be kneaded with 
hot water, or Mutton broth, and a good store of butter, and the paste made 
stiffe and tough, because that Coffin must be deep.

Gervase Markham, The English Hous-wife

To make Paste another Way.   Take butter and ale, and seeth them together: 
then take your flower, and put there into three egs, sugar, saffron and 
salt.

The Good Huswives Handmaid

>From these the chosen fat is butter, but it is likely to be melted into the 
liquor for the pastry dough.  It also suggests to me that it might be worth 
trying this with a whole wheat flour that has been sifted to remove the 
bran.  And, IIRC, there is a recipe for a rye pastry dough as part of a 
recipe in Sabina Welser.

If your dough is soft, then you may have too much fat in the mix or you 
haven't worked it hard enough to properly form the gluten.

Bear


> It might be.  I'll be interested in hearing the
> thoughts of others on this, since I also use all
> purpose flour and have been having the same issues
> with pie crusts.
>
> However, I also suspect that it may be the choice of
> fat.  Using the same methods, I find that dough made
> with butter is much softer and delicate than dough
> made with Crisco.
>
> My suspicion is that we both need to use lard - and
> since I'll be making a pie tonight, I'll try it out
> just to see what (if any) difference it makes.
>
> - Doc