The rolling pin

Let the good times roll

Let the good times roll

It occupies a hallowed place among the utensils handed down from generation to generation. Even peeping from the clutter of a garage sale, the humble rolling pin retains its domestic charm. It’s a universal cooking tool, evoking the pleasures of family life: the sweet memories of all the times it’s been used to spread pastry for beautiful pies, round and tasty.

It’s the tool of the of the "homemade" par excellence. Every culinary culture in the world requires the rolling out of a ball of dough, more or less finely. Everywhere the same act of rolling while turning, and thus shaping tarts, pie crusts, puff pastry, ravioli, ciabattas, pitas, tortillas, pirozhki, chapatis and other specialties.

Just keep rolling along

The rolling pin is an object as old as history. Basically it’s still the primitive cylindrical wooden baton, of 30 to 50 cms, that the Ancient Romans called a “fustula”. It has evolved, however, and is now available in aluminium, glass, or even marble, which is useful for spreading thick paste like nougat.

In practice

Over the centuries, innovation has made the rolling pin easier to manoeuvre, by giving it a handle at each end: an improvement enabling the perfect application of pressure, at the right speed, to spread the ball of dough. The latter should be soft and floury enough to pass under the rolling pin several times without sticking. The dough, stretched in a circle in all directions, is floured and flipped several times, being gradually smoothed to the desired thickness according to its intended use.

The difficulty now lies in adapting the size of the resulting pastry circle to the chosen mould. That’s where the best contemporary technology comes in. Covering the work surface with a graduated non-stick pastry cloth allows the user, at the decisive moment, to roll out the dough with maximum precision, while avoiding the unnecessary addition of flour or fat. If it’s been well-worked, the dough can be lifted without tearing to "darken" the mould: that’s to say, take on its exact shape, edges included.

Variations on the theme

Whether for professional or domestic use, the shape of the rolling pin remains eternal. But some have raised squares to form ravioli, are equipped with sharp wheels to cut regular cookies, or are have been designed to print patterns on the dough. Others are hollow, to be filled with hot or cold water to ease the spreading of hard or soft dough.

What king of dough?The dough can be short-crust, shortbread or puff pastry. Three completely different approaches for radically different results. Each of these dough bases, the pillars of culinary invention, will receive or cover a filling, salty or sweet. From tarts to pies, the dough is the key to a treasury of gastronomic wonders. Raw or gilded with egg yoke, baked, crisp or soft enough to melt in the mouth, pastry is welcome everywhere. A portion of butter, double the flour, a little water and salt and you’re good to go.