CookBook Team

Types of pastry compared

Pastry types differ mainly in how the fat is combined with the flour. Rubbed-in fat gives crumbly shortcrust, layered fat gives flaky puff, and cooked paste gives hollow choux.

A flaky croissant, choux puff and tart shell on a ceramic platter

CookBook TeamUpdated Oct 10, 2026

Six pastries compared

Ratios are by weight, taken from the recipes cited below. They compare selected ingredients, not complete formulas: choux, for example, also needs eggs. Professional recipes vary, so treat these ratios as starting points and follow a complete recipe.

Pastry	How the fat goes in	Typical ratio by weight	Texture	Typical uses
Shortcrust (pâte brisée)	Cold fat rubbed or cut into flour, then a little water	2:1 flour to butter (Michelin), or 3:2:1 flour, fat, water (Ruhlman)	Crisp, crumbly to flaky	Quiche, fruit pies, chicken pie
Sweet pastry (pâte sucrée, sablée)	Butter creamed with sugar and egg, or rubbed into the flour	About 2:1 flour to butter, with sugar at 20–50% of the flour	Short and crumbly	Sweet tarts and tartlets
Puff (pâte feuilletée)	Butter block sealed in dough, then rolled and folded	Butter about 80–90% of the flour	Crisp, separate, flaky leaves	Napoleons, filled pastries, savoury pies
Rough puff	Cold butter flakes mixed in, then rolled and folded	Butter about 75–95% of the flour	Flaky, closer to a folded shortcrust	Turnovers, palmiers
Choux	Butter melted in boiling liquid, flour cooked in, eggs beaten in	Liquid about 1.5 times the flour; butter 60–75% of the flour	Crisp shell, hollow centre	Éclairs, profiteroles, gougères
Filo	Melted butter or oil brushed between sheets	Dough about 2:1 flour to water	Paper-thin, crisp layers	Baklava, spanakopita

Shortcrust: two ratios in common use

Coating the flour with fat before the water goes in limits gluten, which keeps shortcrust tender. Sources disagree on how much fat to use:

2:1 flour to butter. The Michelin Guide pâte brisée uses 250 g flour, 125 g butter, an optional egg and a little water.
3:2:1 flour, fat, water. Michael Ruhlman's ratio, reported by NPR and The Splendid Table, puts fat at about 67% of the flour.
60–80% fat. King Arthur Baking recommends this range; its classic double crust uses 297 g flour to 188 g butter and shortening (63%).

Method essentials: keep the fat very cold, leave some pieces the size of a small coin for flakiness (King Arthur), add just enough cold water to bind, and chill before rolling.

Sweet pastry: sucrée and sablée

The names are used loosely. Michelin calls brisée plus 50 g sugar "pâte sucrée" and describes sablée as more crumbly, with icing sugar, soft butter and often ground almonds. Meilleur du Chef separates them by method: sucrée is creamed (200 g flour, 100 g butter, 80 g icing sugar, 1 egg) and sablée is rubbed in (250 g flour, 125 g butter, 125 g sugar, 1 egg plus 1 yolk). The French national baking institute INBP teaches both methods, aiming for minimal gluten, and recommends low-gluten flour and an overnight rest in the fridge to limit shrinking.

Puff and rough puff

Classic puff encloses a butter block in a lean dough (détrempe), then rolls and folds it. In the oven, steam trapped by the fat layers pushes them apart (BAKERpedia). King Arthur's classic puff pastry uses 570 g flour to 453 g butter (79%) and six letter folds; a French CAP pastry training sheet uses 500 g flour to 450 g butter (90%).

Rough puff flattens cold butter into flakes in the flour, then folds the rough, uneven dough. King Arthur's rough puff uses 360 g flour to 340 g butter with one letter fold and two book folds; the French sheet's quick version (feuilletage rapide) uses 500 g flour to 375 g butter.

Lamination and the layer maths

A turn is one roll and one fold. A letter fold (single turn, tour simple) folds the dough in thirds and triples the butter layers. A book fold (double turn, tour double) folds both ends to the centre, then in half, and multiplies them by four.

Starting from one butter layer between two of dough:

Butter layers = 3^L × 4^B, where L is the number of letter folds and B the number of book folds
Dough layers = butter layers + 1, because at each fold two dough surfaces meet and fuse
Total layers = 2 × butter layers + 1

Worked layer counts

Folds after lock-in	Butter layers	Dough layers	Total
1 letter + 1 book	12	13	25
3 letter (croissant)	27	28	55
1 letter + 2 book (rough puff, notional)	48	49	97
4 letter	81	82	163
4 book	256	257	513
6 letter (classic puff)	729	730	1,459

Rough puff counts are notional, because its butter starts as scattered flakes. Published counts differ because writers count different things. King Arthur counts both: 163 layers for four letter folds and 25 for a letter plus a book fold. Wikipedia gives 729 butter, 730 dough and 1,459 in total for six turns; many recipes quote only 729. America's Test Kitchen counts 3 to the power of the turns from a single sheet, and found layers fused beyond eight turns. The French training sheet counts a double turn as 1.5 turns, so "5 turns" can mean several sequences.

Choux

Choux is cooked twice. Boil the liquid and butter, add the flour at once, and stir over the heat until the paste leaves the pan and a film forms on the base. Cool it to below 52 °C (125 °F) (King Arthur), then beat in the eggs gradually until the paste is glossy and a line drawn through it closes slowly (Meilleur du Chef: 250 g milk and water, 100 g butter, 165 g flour, 250 g egg). Cooking pre-gelatinises the starch, so the paste holds more water to turn into steam. Moist walls collapse, so bake until a test shell is dry inside.

Filo

Filo is a lean dough of flour, water and salt, sometimes with egg or vinegar, stretched until you can see through it (Exploratorium). Gourmet Traveller uses 500 g flour to 250 ml water and brushes the sheets with 200 g melted butter. Keep unused sheets covered: they dry and tear quickly.

Blind baking sets and browns a case before a wet or unbaked filling goes in: fully for fillings that never go back in the oven, partly for custards that bake briefly (King Arthur). King Arthur's method: chill the lined pan for 30 minutes, cover the pastry with parchment or foil, fill with weights, beans or rice, and bake at 190 °C (375 °F) for 20 minutes. For a full bake, remove the weights, prick the base and bake 20–25 minutes more.

Problem	Usual causes	Prevention
Shrinking or slumping	Overworked or stretched dough, too much or too warm fat, too little rest	Roll gently, do not stretch, chill before baking, use weights
Puffing	Bubbles forming under an unpricked, unweighted base	Prick (dock) the base and fill with weights
Soggy base	Underbaked pastry under a wet filling	Prebake; seal with melted chocolate, or egg yolk and cream brushed on 5 minutes before the end (INBP)

Key temperatures

Lamination needs dough and butter equally pliable: over-chilled butter fractures, warm butter melts (King Arthur workbook). Oven settings vary widely between sources; the oven temperature converter includes a fan-oven adjustment.

Stage	Temperature	Source
Puff dough while laminating	2–7 °C (35–45 °F)	King Arthur
Puff butter block	16–21 °C (60–70 °F); 16 °C (61 °F)	King Arthur; BAKERpedia
Shortcrust blind bake	190 °C (375 °F); 218 °C (425 °F)	King Arthur prebake guide; lemon meringue pie
Sweet tart shells	About 155 °C (311 °F), down from about 180 °C (356 °F)	INBP
Puff and rough puff	204 °C (400 °F); 190 °C (374 °F) falling to 170 °C (338 °F); 176 °C (349 °F) convection	King Arthur; French training sheet; BAKERpedia
Choux	218 °C (425 °F) for 15 minutes, then 177 °C (350 °F); or 170 °C (338 °F) fan	King Arthur; Meilleur du Chef

Topping a tart? Compare French, Swiss and Italian meringue. Filling a sweet case with chocolate? Use the ganache ratio calculator. Changing tart tin size? Scale with the baking pan size converter. Converting a recipe from cups? Check the ingredient weight chart.

Keep your pastry recipes together

CookBook saves recipes from websites, social posts, photos and cookbooks and keeps them organised. In cooking mode you can change the servings and the measurement system; ingredient amounts scale, but baking times do not, so check the pastry as it bakes.

Sources

A little more help

Frequently asked questions

Is pâte brisée the same as shortcrust pastry?

Broadly, yes. Pâte brisée is the French form of shortcrust: cold fat worked into flour and bound with a little water, sometimes with an egg. French recipes such as the Michelin Guide's use half as much butter as flour, while American pie doughs often carry more fat, around two parts fat to three parts flour.

How many turns does puff pastry need?

Usually four to six single turns. BAKERpedia gives a minimum of four and a maximum of six single folds, King Arthur Baking's classic recipe uses six letter folds, and a French CAP training sheet says puff pastry generally gets five turns, counting a double turn as one and a half. Rest the dough in the fridge after every two turns or so, so the butter stays firm.

Do I need ceramic pie weights to blind bake?

No. King Arthur Baking lists dried beans, uncooked rice and granulated sugar as alternatives, poured onto a liner of parchment, foil or a paper coffee filter until the case is about two-thirds full. If the sides still slip, it suggests baking the lined case upside down between two identical pie pans for the first 20 minutes.

Why did my choux buns collapse after baking?

Usually because the walls were still moist when they left the oven. As the shells cool, the steam inside condenses and wet walls fall in. King Arthur Baking suggests breaking open a test shell to check it is dry before taking out the batch, and its cream puff recipe slits each shell and returns it to the oven for 5 minutes to let the steam escape.

Can I freeze homemade puff or rough puff pastry?

Yes. King Arthur Baking freezes its rough puff for up to 1 month and its blitz puff for up to 3 months, well wrapped, then thaws it overnight in the fridge before rolling.

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“Types of pastry compared”, CookBook Manager. Updated Oct 10, 2026. https://cookbookmanager.com/guides/types-of-pastry

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