Flaky, Puff vs Filo Pastry
Pastry is perhaps one of the most popular baked items around the world. The most common ingredients of the dough that is used to make pastries are flour, butter, eggs, cream, and milk. Baking powder is also used to prepare pastries. Tarts, quiches, and pies are very popular names of baked products that classify as pastries. There are sub categories of pastries with names such as flaky, puff, and filo pastries. People remain confused between these three sub varieties of pastries because of similarities and overlap. However, there are differences that will be talked about in this article.
Filo Pastry
Also called Phyllo, Filo is a very thin pastry made into sheets. To make this pastry, these paper thin layers are wrapped around a filling that is baked after brushing the layers with butter. The flour used to make this type of pastry is unleavened.
Puff Pastry
Puff is a kind of pastry made with unleavened flour. It is a pastry having several layers that expand to form a puff during baking. This is the reason why it is called puff pastry. Salt and water are used to make dough of flour and butter. This pastry rises as ingredients react with each other making the pastry fluffy and puffy. These pastries are always light and tender to touch.
Flaky pastry
Flaky pastry is another subcategory of pastry that is unleavened and light and crisp. It has a number of layers like puffy pastry though the addition of shortening in the form of lumps in contrast to a large shortening that is used in puffy pastry.
Summary
Pastry is the name of the dough that is used to make baked products and also the name of the baked products. There are many subcategories of pastries with minor differences in their making process. Filo is a paper thin pastry with many layers while puff is so called because of the puff that is formed during baking. Flaky pastry differs from puff only through the addition of shortening in lumps during the making.