Food - Drink
Why You Should Use Your Potato Masher To Blend Pastry Dough
By JOE DILLARD
When making pastries, incorporating butter into your dough evenly is a must, since properly-mixed pockets of butter melt in the oven and create steam, leading to a light and flaky texture. A pastry cutter is the most traditional tool to cut butter into dough, but you can also use a more versatile kitchen tool that you may already own.
A potato masher is the best stand-in for a pastry cutter. This handheld tool works cold butter into your dough in a similar way, since both tools are designed to smash ingredients and mix them together, but a potato masher's longer handle keeps your warm hands away from the cold dough for an even better, flakier result.
These two tools are also interchangeable to the extent that you can use a traditional pastry cutter to mash potatoes, as well. If you want to make perfect pastry for pies, crumbles, and more, reach for your potato masher to keep things cool and well-combined, and never worry about warm, melty, greasy dough again.