Why doesn't my pastry work?

[UnSerpentQuiCourt]

Yearning for the delicious pies my mother used to make, today I cooked a good beef stew, made pastry (1lb plain flour, 8 oz marg, pinch of salt and cold water), put it in the fridge for 30 mins, rolled it out to about 1/2 cm, put it over the stew and baked it at 200C until the pastry was golden brown.
The filling was lovely, but the pastry was thin, chewy and grey underneath.
Why??

Over-handled?

People think you need to knead it, but that's bread. The fat needs to be cold, grated or cut with a knife, rubbed in quickly but thoroughly & then pulled together with as little handling as poss before resting & roolling out gently.

True, I did give it a bit of a knead. I make good bread.

And I had soft margerine - no grating possible.

I wouldn't use soft margarine. Could that have been the problem? Might it have had weird stuff in it?
I use butter or butter and lard.

yy, definitely a combination of soft marg and overhandling. Cold everything - read one good tip to measure out all ingredients, inc grated/cubed butter, and then stick the bowl in the fridge for half an hour - and then as little handling as possible. I mix in the iced water until I have a pile of lumps looking like big popcorn, then pile into clingfilm, chill and then bring together and roll out. Food processors are ace for this, so long as you watch like a hawk.

you can't use soft marg in pastry - it needs rubbing in to a consistency of fine bread crumbs and you can only do that with hard fat. I use a mixture of lard and butter (sorry but if you're treating yourself to home-made pastry it's so worth using lard). I chop it into one-inch cubes and put it in the freezer before rubbing in. I then rub in for eons - usually in the evening infront of the telly, putting it back in the freezer periodically if it gets warm. I only ever do it at Christmas for mince pies and it's a real effort but once in a while worth it.

Seem to remember my mother doing it with apparently little effort ... but then, that's what mothers do. Will have to be food processor, although she didn't have one of those. And she ran the farm office, helped on the farm and had two small children.

Half fat to flour. Pinch salt. Cold fat. Cold hands. Rub rub rub. Cold knife. Cold water. COLD is the theme

My mum has really cold hands, she makes ace pastry. Even if I dip mine in cold water they are too hot so I use a food processor.

How thick would you roll it out?

One other thing - for steak & kidney pie-type pastry I would use suet. Gives a more solid pastry. The veggie type is as good as the 'normal' type.

Thickness - not paving slab. Not see-through. HTH.

Plain or SR?

Plain, you don't want your pastry to rise! I echo the others, no to marg and yes to cold.

I always use SR flour and that hard block marg....used to be echo or stork

I use 1½ times flour to fat and I use egg to bind, if you use a whole block of marg (250g ish) you'll need two eggs max....usually only the white or yolk of the second one depending on the flour.

Also if it is for a sweet pie I will add some icing sugar, heading towards a paté brisee
Sometimes I rest it but am usually not that organised, as already said, do not over work it, just press it together, roll gently, do not over flour the board either

All that aside, shop pastry is better than ever and I never make my own puff anymore.

I made puff a few months ago, just to see what it was like, and I have to say it was way better than the bought stuff, I was quite surprised.

Nigella says SR flour makes shortcrust lighter; I normally use plain but I would happily use SR, either is fine IMO.

The one thing I would never use again (Nigella, it was your fault) is OO flour, which shrank like crazy because of all the gluten.