Paul Hollywood’s Pies & Puds
After we were both completely sick of curries, having eaten nothing but curry for about a month, Elina suggested pies might be a suitable next topic. Having enjoyed Paul Hollywood’s book on bread, his book on pies and puddings seemed like an excellent choice.
The first section of the book takes you through making pastry. I have tried most of them. Shortcrust and hot water crust are okay, but ruff puff is my favourite. I now substitute almost any pie pastry with ruff puff now because it is so tasty. I have not tried full puff, because I cannot be bothered to wait around eight hours for it to be ready.
The second section of the book looks at pies. This typically calls for you to make a pastry from part one, prepare a filling and combine the two. The Thai chicken pie is our favourite so far. My raised game pie worked well too, though it was heavily waited to the game I could get down the market. I don’t even know where to buy buffalo from, so I did the buffalo and ale pie with beef and it worked fine.
The puddings section has been less well used but I did make a concerted effort to give at least half a dozen of them a go. They tasted fine but often looked less than brilliant. For example, here are the fruit pies I made for New Year’s Eve. This was my third attempt.
For posts about the recipes I tried from this book, see my attempt at short bread whiskey dodgers and my selection of pies. Looking back, none of them look that neat. Thankfully, they all tasted good.
After we were both completely sick of curries, having eaten nothing but curry for about a month, Elina suggested pies might be a suitable next topic. Having enjoyed Paul Hollywood’s book on bread, his book on pies and puddings seemed like an excellent choice.
The first section of the book takes you through making pastry. I have tried most of them. Shortcrust and hot water crust are okay, but ruff puff is my favourite. I now substitute almost any pie pastry with ruff puff now because it is so tasty. I have not tried full puff, because I cannot be bothered to wait around eight hours for it to be ready.
The second section of the book looks at pies. This typically calls for you to make a pastry from part one, prepare a filling and combine the two. The Thai chicken pie is our favourite so far. My raised game pie worked well too, though it was heavily waited to the game I could get down the market. I don’t even know where to buy buffalo from, so I did the buffalo and ale pie with beef and it worked fine.
The puddings section has been less well used but I did make a concerted effort to give at least half a dozen of them a go. They tasted fine but often looked less than brilliant. For example, here are the fruit pies I made for New Year’s Eve. This was my third attempt.
For posts about the recipes I tried from this book, see my attempt at short bread whiskey dodgers and my selection of pies. Looking back, none of them look that neat. Thankfully, they all tasted good.