Linzer Torte

Rubbing fat into flour 47 recipes

• The fat is cold when it starts and still firm when the rubbing stops, and the bowl has not warmed under the hands.
• Stopped early, while it still looks like coarse crumbs with pieces of fat visible in it, not worked on to a smooth even sand, which means the pieces have gone.
• Nothing is greasy or glossy and nothing has smeared into a paste against the side of the bowl.
• Liquid added last and only enough to bring it together: pressed, it just holds, with no wet patch and nothing sticking to the hand.
• Rested cold before it is rolled or shaped, so the gluten relaxes and the fat firms again after being handled.

Where it goes wrong The fat was too warm, or it was rubbed until the mixture looked uniform. Once the fat has melted into the flour there are no solid pieces left to steam apart in the oven, so the bake is sandy or tough instead of flaky, and nothing done later puts those layers back.

Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts 70 recipes

• A single layer on dry metal with nothing added: no fat, and nothing else sharing the pan or the tray and competing for the heat.
• It is kept moving: shaken, stirred, or turned. Anything left still scorches on the face touching the metal while the rest of it is barely warm.
• It is judged by smell before sight: once it is fragrant there are seconds left, not minutes, and the nose reaches that point well before the colour does.
• It leaves the pan the instant it is done, onto a cold surface. A hot pan keeps toasting whatever stays in it, and carryover here is the difference between done and ruined.
• The colour is even and light rather than patchy, with nothing black at the edges: one scorched piece taints the whole quantity it is ground into.

Where it goes wrong It was left alone for a moment while something else was attended to. Dry heat has no margin: the pieces against the metal go from fragrant to acrid inside a minute, and the bitterness cannot be picked back out of a ground mixture.