Wartime Salad-Oil Pastry (1941)

Another pastry on the Kitchen Front

Heath's Kitchen Front Recipes and Hints gives this method alongside a pastry using dripping or suet. The liquid-oil version offers another way to make dough in a wartime collection, without requiring every cook to have the same fat available.

Self-raising flour is part of his recipe and stays in ours. It isn't ordinary all-purpose flour with the leavening left for the reader to guess. The different fat and flour forms are reasons to follow this pastry's own method, rather than expect it to behave exactly like a favorite butter crust.

Our single nine-inch crust uses less flour while keeping Heath's three spoonfuls of oil as a modern volume. He mixes oil with water before adding it to the flour and aims for a stiff dough; we add them separately and aim for a soft, cohesive dough. Both methods roll the pastry immediately.

Water helps the dough come together

Heath gives a water guide and allows more to be added gradually as needed. That leaves room for the cook to observe the dough. A prepared measuring cup is useful, but its contents aren't a compulsory target if the flour has already come together.

The method below adds water gradually, using its own softer dough cue. It needs only a brief knead before rolling, without a refrigerator rest. That makes the pastry preparation compact, though the finished pie may take much longer.

Cooking on the Kitchen Front sets this component beside completed dishes such as potato-apple cakes and a vegetable pie. Here, choosing the filling is still ahead. Its preparation, assembly and baking directions will determine the rest of the project.

The ten-minute estimate ends with an unbaked crust in the pie plate. The filling and its baking instructions determine when the pie is ready to slice.