Vanillekipferl

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.

Shaping by hand 85 recipes

• The pieces match: weighed, or judged against each other rather than by dividing the mass by eye, so that no piece is half again the size of its neighbour.
• Surfaces are smooth and unbroken with no cracks, tears, or dry patches, and the seams are sealed and sitting underneath.
• The shape is defined and it holds while the tray waits: it has not slumped, spread, or relaxed back out of its form.
• Nothing is trapped that should not be: no air pocket where filling should be, no filling breaking through the surface, and no excess flour greying the outside.
• They finish together in the heat: no piece done while another is still raw, which is the only test that the first mark was met.

Where it goes wrong The dough was worked past its point or shaped without a rest, so it fought back: the pieces spring out of shape on the tray and bake tight, uneven, and torn along the surface.