Food Tours · Tour

Laminate Your Own Puff Pastry, Take the Tarts Home

Ninety minutes, eight people, in a workshop on Rua da Bainharia two minutes below Porto Cathedral. The pastel de nata is two hard things stacked. The pastry is laminated: butter folded into dough repeatedly so that it separates into dozens of leaves in the oven, and rolled into a log then cut into discs, which is why the base spirals. The custard is a cooked one, thickened with flour and set with egg yolk, poured in cool and then blasted in an oven hot enough to blister the top in minutes rather than to bake it slowly. Instructors who have done this for years walk you through each step, and you make several tarts yourself rather than watching someone else do it. Then you eat some on the spot with port, coffee, juice or water and savoury snacks, and the rest go into a paper box to take with you. So does the recipe, for both the tart and the puff pastry, which is the part most workshops keep to themselves. The history comes with it: the tarts were made by monks at a Lisbon monastery who had egg whites left over from starching habits and yolks to use, and the recipe went commercial when the monastery closed in the 1830s. All ingredients included. Lactose-free, gluten-free and vegan versions on request. Up to eight guests, in English, with bathrooms on site. Porto Cathedral is the landmark to navigate by, though you can also come up from Rua Mouzinho da Silveira.