Felise Lam

Investigative work
1. Aim:
To investigate how different types of fat (butter[control], pastry margarine and vegetable
fat(shortening) affect the colour, flavour, texture(tenderness), height and flakiness of 100g short
crust pastry wafers.

2. Method:

Control:
Basic short crust pastry recipe using 50g butter.

Control Variation 1 Variation 2
50g butter 50g pastry margarine 50g vegetable fats

Basic recipe of short crust pastry:

Ingredients Method
100g plain flour
50g butter
2tbsp cold water
1. Preheat oven to 210
0
C
2. Sift the flour
3. Rub fat into the flour
4. Add the water all at once to the fat and flour mixture
5. Mix with a palette knife to form a firm but not hard dough
6. Knead the pastry very lightly with the fingertip until smooth and evenly
mixed
7. Roll the pastry on a lightly floured board
8. Use short, sharp strokes in a forward direction
9. Allow the pastry to rest in a cool place for 10 minutes
10. Cut pastry into equal size with 0.5cm thickness
11. Bake in a hot oven of 200
0
C for 20 minutes

Materials and equipment list:

Amount Items
1 Table spoon
1 Plastic sieve
1 Palette knife
1 Rolling pin
1 Measuring jug
1 Fork
3 Mixing bowl
1 Plastic food wrap
6 Baking tray
2 Pieces of A4-size greaseproof paper
1 Metric ruler
3 Self-adhesive stickers
1 Permanent marker



Ingredient list:
Ingredients control Variation 1 Variation 2 Total
Flour 100g 100g 100g 300g
Water 2tbsp 2tbsp 2tbsp 6tbsp
Butter 50g - - 50g
Pastry margarine - 50g - 50g
Vegetable fat - - 50g 50g

Procedure
Step Action
1. Prepare all the equipment and ingredients
2. Label baking tray with control(butter), variation 1(pastry margarine), and variation 2(vegetable
fat)
3. Sift the flour
4. Cut the fat into small cubes
5. For each variation, rub the fat into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs
6. Bind the fat and flour mixture together with 2 tablespoons of cold water
7. Knead the pastry dough into a ball. Wrap it with plastic food wrap and leave it in the
refrigerator for 10 minutes
8. Place the dough on a piece of greaseproof paper
9. Roll the pastry dough into a thickness of 0.5cm
10. Cut the dough into 3x3cm square wafers. Prepare at least 3 wafers
11. Repeat step 11 for each variation
12. Preheat oven to 200
0
C
13. Place the wafers on the baking try according to their labels
14. Bake on the top shelf of the oven for 20 minutes
15. After 20 minutes of baking, remove the pastries from oven
16. Stack the three pastry wafers. Measure the total height using a metric ruler.
17. Test the flakiness of the wafers by breaking one piece of wafer into two
18. Taste a wafer from each variation. Record the colour, texture(tenderness), height, taste and
aroma





Precautions:
1. Keep mixture cool during preparation
2. All ingredient used must be measured accurately
3. Use the same temperature of cold water
4. Flour for rolling out the pastry must be the same
5. Fat should be kept in the refrigerator until time to use it
6. Fat used must be cold and fresh
7. Handle the dough lightly
8. Do not stretch the pastry during rolling out or the pastry will shrink during baking
9. Leave pastry to relax and cool before baking
10. Cook in hot oven
11. Add water all at once to the fats and flavour mixture to give even texture of pastry
How to ensure experiment is carried out fairly?
1. Time taken for mixing fats and flour must be the same
2. Roll to same thickness
3. All fats must be kept in refrigerator until time to use
4. Allow all pastries to rest for the same time
5. Oven must be preheated 5 minutes before baking
6. All pastries must be baked at the same temperature of 200
0
C

Data collection methods
1. Record surface appearance
(greasy, very greasy, sunken in the middle, rough surface, smooth surface)

2. Record colour
(golden brown, burnt, pale yellow, pale)

3. Record crumbliness (texture)
Test the crumbliness of the wafers by breaking one piece of wafer into two and examine the
flakes. (which breaks more easily)

4. Measure height
Stack all the samples of wafers. Measure the total height using a metric ruler.

5. Taste
Place the wafer in the mouth and chew. Record the mouth feel. Rinse mouth thoroughly
with water.

6. Repeat for each of the samples.
Information Synthesis
3. Results
Observation chart
Characteristic Control
(butter)
Variation 1
(pastry margarine)
Variation 2
(shortening)
Appearance/ colour


Golden brown 5 Whitish Yellowish 3 Pale 2
Average
height
(cm)
Before

0.5cm


0.5cm 0.5cm
After 0.93cm 3


1.3cm 5 1.07cm 4
Texture
(tenderness)
Dry,Crumbly 5


Soft,Flaky 3 Flaky,Crumbly 5
Taste


Buttery 5 Bland 3 Weak 2
Flakiness





Characteristic

Rating scale
1 2 3 4 5
Appearance/Colour


Burnt Pale Pale yellow Yellow Golden brown
Height


Before

0.5cm 0.5cm 0.5cm 0.5cm 0.5cm
After


Texture


mushy chewy Soft and flaky Slightly flaky Crumbly
Taste


Tasteless Weak Bland Slightly
Buttery
Buttery


Explanation of star diagram
Control (butter)
The star diagram is evenly distributed and covers the largest area. This shows that butter has the best
results of all the variations in terms of taste, appearance and colour. It also means that it has the most
appealing characteristic of all the samples.
Variation A (pastry margarine)
The star diagram is covers the smallest area of the diagram. This shows that pastry margarine has the
poorest results and which also means that it has the least appealing characteristics of all the three
pastry. However it is the highest for the height which means it has the best results for height.
Variation B (vegetable fat)
The star diagram covers a slightly smaller area than butter. This means that it yields the second best
results among the three pastry. It is also the best in texture and appearance. Thus it is the second most
appealing pastry of all the samples.
Conclusion
Introduction
Fats make pastry tender by shortening the strands of gluten in the dough. They also add colour, flavor
and texture to baked products. The type of fat used affects the characteristics of the finished products.
In this experiment, three pastry wafers each using a different fat are made. One is made with butter.
Another is made with pastry margarine. The third one is made with vegetable fat, which is oil that had
been hydrogenated to make it solid. The pastries using different fats are made into wafers and baked on
0
1
2
3
4
5
Appearance
Colour
Height(cm) Texture
Taste
Butter
Pastry Margarine
Vegetable Fat
a baking tray. After baking, the wafers were evaluated to determine the effects of using each type of
fats.
Explain results
Butter is the best of the three types of fat used.
Texture
The pastry made with vegetable fat had the best flaky texture and was also very tender. Following
vegetable fat was pastry margarine. The last one that was the least flaky was butter. This is so as the
vegetable fat gives a very good shortening effect while butter does not. Instead, butter gives a more
crispy texture to the pastry compared to the other to variations.
Flavour
Butter gives very good flavour to the pastry and makes the pastry very tasty. It gives a very strong
buttery flavour. As for pastry margarine, the flavour is not as good as it lacks flavour. It does not add
much flavour to the pastry and thus causes it to be bland. Finally, vegetable fat gives the least flavour as
it itself does not have much taste. It makes the pastry very tasteless and it is not tasty at all. Thus butter
is the best.
Colour
Butter gave a very nice golden brown and smooth appearance. Pastry margarine only gave a slight
yellowish pale colour which was not very appetising. Vegetable fat gave a very pale colour which made it
the last of the three.
Closing paragraph
To conclude, this experiment shows that different types of fats does affect the texture, flavour and
tenderness of short crust pastry. Our experiment concluded that using butter results in the pastry have
very good flavour, colour and texture. This is followed by pastry using pastry margarine and lastly by
vegetable fat.