Flaky pastry is the type of soft pastry that breaks into flakes easily when cooked — the layered dough behind sausage rolls, pies, and turnovers. It is made by folding fat into dough in repeated turns: each fold multiplies the layers — dough, fat, dough, fat — until hundreds of alternating strata exist. In the oven, the water in the dough turns to steam, forcing the layers apart, while the fat fries each one crisp and separate. The result shatters rather than crumbles, each bite a cascade of thin, buttery leaves. Flaky pastry is the quicker, rougher cousin of puff pastry — fewer turns, a more rustic flake — but the physics is identical: lamination, steam, and separation. It is architecture you can eat.