pastry

Pastry is flour and fat worked together to wrap or top a dish. Rolled out, laid over, and baked until golden.

The kinds are worth knowing, since shortcrust is crumbly, puff rises in layers, and filo is paper-thin. The word is also a count noun for the finished item, so a pastry from a bakery is a small sweet thing. Pastry chefs are a separate profession in a kitchen. The advice about cold hands and a cool surface is real, since warm fat makes heavy pastry.