A Visit to the Pastry Room

A Visit to the Pastry Room

It’s British Pie Week, so we decided to brave the clouds of flour and visit the COOK Pastry Room. Carol and the team answer our questions.

Q. Where does COOK get its pastry from?

A. When we make it ourselves, we use a quality Somerset butter and flour milled for us by a family-run company called Haygates, who have been milling for around 200 years.

Q. So which pastry don’t you make in the Kitchen?

A. Making filo and puff pastry is incredibly labour intensive, which would add a lot to our costings (and therefore the price). So we leave these to specialists.

Q. How many pastry lids or pie cases do you make in a week?

A. It depends, but we’ve produced 18,175 portions of pie so far this week, and it’s only Wednesday. Go pastry section!

Q. Who makes those pretty little pastry leaves?

A. Over Christmas we made 7,140 of them by hand, so we all get stuck in. Each of us has a signature leaf.

Q. Can you freeze pastry at home?

A. You can. It gives it a good resting time – try it, you’ll love the results.

Q. Last but not least: what’s your favourite pie?

A. A resounding favourite among the team is the COOK Chicken, Ham & Leek pie. (Ours, of course!)

From left to right, Carol, Deb and Keith from the Pastry Team.

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