Easy pastry recipes with step by step instructions and tons of troubleshooting tips to help you master a variety of pastries!
From choux pastry and puff pastry to shortcrust, pie crust, viennoiserie, and even fried pastries, learn how to make foolproof appetizers, mains, desserts, and so much more with these recipes.
I love making and baking (and eating!) pastry. It’s one of the most therapeutic activities that my ADHD mind thrives on in the kitchen.
While baking cakes was my first love as a kid, I took to bread and pastry making soon after, and I’ve never looked back.
I remember baking perfect little choux pastry puffs as a 7 year old and the thrill it gave me. I even shared my detailed choux pastry troubleshooting post with all those tips I picked up after over three decades of choux baking.
If you love pastries and have always wanted to make them at home but were too intimidated to try, my step by step recipes are for you!
So, let me guide you with these step by step easy pastry recipes, and you’ll be crowned pastry queen or king in no time at all!😊
- Choux Pastry
- Puff Pastry
- Viennoiserie (Enriched Pastry)
- Shortcrust Pastry
- Pie Crust Dough
- Fried Pastry Dough
Choux Pastry
Choux pastry (French pâte à choux ) is quite possibly my favorite pastry of all, and I’ve shared a series of easy recipes to help you master this delicate pastry.
It’s my favorite to make because it’s so easy, and it doesn’t use any chemical leaveners (such as baking soda or baking powder or even yeast) to rise.
Instead it uses air and moisture (steam) to rise as you bake it, and it’s a splendidly versatile pastry.
In my choux pastry troubleshooting post and related recipes I answer all the following questions.
- Why didn’t my choux puff up (and why did my choux collapse)?
- How do I get a hollow interior (and how to fill it)?
- Can I make both sweet and savory choux (with different fillings)?
- What’s the right dough consistency and how many eggs do I need?
- How do I store extra choux pastry shells / can I freeze them?
- Easy, intermediate, and advanced variations of choux pastry recipes.
And so much more!
1. How To Make Choux Pastry
2. Cream Puffs
3. Profiteroles
4. Chocolate Choux Pastry
5. Eclairs
6. Earl grey eclairs
7. Choux au craquelin
8. Strawberry cream puffs
9. Chouquettes
10. Paris-brest
11. Chicken puffs
Puff Pastry
If I have a little time on my hands, or I’m making some appetizers or snacks or pies for a dinner party or holiday meal, then puff pastry is my absolute go-to.
While traditional puff pastry can be quite time-consuming for home bakers, there’s a fantastic alternative that absolutely anyone can master – rough puff pastry!
Puff pastry is buttery, layered dough that gives you incredibly lift with lots of layers and crisp flakiness , and rough puff pastry gives you all that and so much more in just 30-40 minutes of your time!
Sounds too good to be true? Check out my popular guide on rough puff pastry and all the easy puff pastry recipes that will help you make show-stopping desserts, appetizers, and meals. In these guides, I cover,
- What’s the difference between rough puff and traditional puff pastry?
- How to incorporate butter and create extra flaky layers
- Why does my puff pastry shrink as I roll it out?
- How many folds / turns do I need?
- How to store or freeze rough puff pastry dough?
And so much more!
12. How To Make Rough Puff Pastry
13. Chicken hand pies
14. Easy sausage rolls
15. Pork sausage rolls
16. Egg and bacon breakfast pie
17. Palmiers
18. Vegetarian curry puffs
19. Mini French onion pies
20. Goat cheese and honey tarts
21. Chocolate stuffed poached pear tarts
Viennoiserie (Enriched Pastry)
This is where bread meets pastry . Yeast-leavened dough (i.e. bread) enriched with butter, eggs, milk (i.e. pastry) to create those delightfully buttery, shatteringly crisp layers of French croissants, or the soft, rich, tender crumb of brioche.
I honed my skills to make beautiful viennoiserie at the Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts Institute in Ottawa, and I’ve shared all those tips and knowledge in these recipes.
Many home bakers think this pastry is too advanced, but you only have to look at the thousands of reader reviews on my recipes to know that anyone – with a little time, patience, and planning, can absolutely master this pastry!
In these recipe guides, I cover,
- How to know when your dough is done kneading
- Why your dough might be too sticky and wet
- All about proofing and shaping
- Why your croissants may not have layers
- Ingredient substitutions
- How to store and freeze the dough
And so, so, so much more!
22. How To Make Croissants
23. Pain Au Chocolate (Chocolate Croissants)
24. Brioche
25. Bostock pastry
26. Custard brioche tarts
Shortcrust Pastry
There’s only a fine line separating shortcrust pastry from pie crust dough (see below). They both typically use the same ingredients; flour, fat (in the form of butter or shortening or lard), and liquid (water).
The difference is mainly in the ingredient ratio and the resulting texture of the baked product .
Shortcrust pastry typically has more flour than fat and could also include eggs, which together make the pastry less flaky (and more crumbly) compared to pie crust.
It’s mainly used to make tart dough , where you could also add sugar for a sweet shortcrust pastry (pâte sucrée) when making sweet tarts. It’s also used to make quiches and sometimes even pies.
So, don’t get hung up on the distinction between shortcrust vs pie crust. They are both made using the same primary ingredients and often used for similar purposes.
With some textural differences that make one preferrable for a particular application over the other.
In the following posts, I show you how to make a variety of easy savory pastries as well as dessert pastry recipes with perfect, failproof shortcrust pastry and pâte sucrée (sweet tart dough).
27. Quiche lorraine
28. Tuna melt mini quiches
29. Pâte sucrée
30. Strawberry tart
31. Piña colada tart
32. Chocolate pâte sucrée
33. Chocolate ganache tart
Pie Crust Dough
Pie crust dough is typically more flaky than shortcrust pastry (see above) due to a comparatively higher amount of fat over flour.
Pie crust is such a classic pastry that anyone can (and maybe even should ) master!
Admittedly, it took me a long time to master pie crusts, but now I can’t even imagine a Thanksgiving or a Christmas without a homemade pie!
My detailed pie crust dough recipe and troubleshooting post is tailored for beginner-bakers that addresses all the common pie dough fails such as,
- Why does my pie crust shrink away from the sides
- The bottom of the crust is soggy
- My pie crust is too tough and chewy, and not flaky
- Why does my dough crack or break when rolling it or transferring it
- My pie crust did not brown at the bottom
And many more stumbling blocks that come with pie baking!
34. How to make pie crust
35. Apple pie
36. Pumpkin pie
37. Lemon meringue pie
38. Passion fruit pie
39. Strawberry rhubarb pie
40. Mixed berry pie
41. Peach galette
42. Strawberry galette
43. Graham flour pie crust
44. Banana cream pie
Fried Pastry Dough
Finally, we have fried pastry dough that includes yeasted dough such as doughnuts to chemically leavened churros and empanada dough.
What ties them all together is that they are all fried in hot oil until golden, crisp, and light, instead of being greasy, dense, and undercooked!
Because frying adds an extra dimension of preparation over baking, fried pastries can come with their own set of issues and troubleshooting such as,
- How to know if my dough is properly proofed and ready for frying
- Why are my doughnuts (fried pastries) greasy
- Why did my fried pastries not brown enough
- My dough fell apart while frying
- Why are my fried pastries dense, heavy, or undercooked on the inside?
45. Churros
46. How to make doughnuts
47. Blueberry glazed doughnuts
48. Coffee doughnuts
49. Mini rainbow doughnuts
50. Empanada dough
