msalper
I've watched my gran many times make pastry by hand - she would first cut up the butter and lard into small pieces, put them into a chilled bowl - even putting little pieces of ice with the butter/lard to keep it from melting. As she would do this, she would say to me "cold hands? warm heart!".
Working quickly, with those cool hands, she would take a few pieces of butter/lard at a time and place it on the flour - picking up a bit of flour and a bit of butter/lard and "pinching" them together until it became crumbly (yes, like bread crumbs - maybe the pieces will be a little bigger than bread crumbs (peas)), but crumbly all the same. The flour, of course, had already been measured and set out in a little "hill" on her clean counter.
It's after this point where I think mine goes wrong - when I add the little bits of ice water, the dough is either too dry or too wet and sticky, and in panic, I "handle" it too much to fix. This is where I need practise with "feel".
When done, she would gather the dough up into a ball, and refridgerate for at least an hour before rolling out. The rolling out would be done on a clean, lightly floured surface - also working quickly with minimal handling of the dough.
There's a reason for all this 'coldness' - something to do with not allowing too much gluten to form, gluten being the thing that makes the pastry tough.
p.s. I've read that if you take the full amount of lard required and then, instead of just lard, use half that measurement in butter, and half lard, you'll get the good texture from the lard and good flavour from the butter. I think my gran used to just use butter. -Sandy
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