pastry
Americannoun
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a sweet baked food made of dough, especially the shortened paste used for pie crust and the like.
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any item of food of which such dough forms an essential part, as a pie, tart, or napoleon.
noun
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a dough of flour, water, shortening, and sometimes other ingredients
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baked foods, such as tarts, made with this dough
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an individual cake or pastry pie
Etymology
Origin of pastry
Explanation
A pastry is a sweet baked good. If you are into fruit tarts or chocolate eclairs, then you've got a thing for pastries. Most pastries start out as a soft dough or batter made from flour, sugar, eggs, milk, and butter. A tray of pastry at breakfast could include Danishes and croissants, while dessert pastries might be baklava, cream puffs, and strudel. All of these are variously flavored baked sweets, some formed from thin layers of flaky dough and others filled with fruit, cream, or other fillings. Another type of pastry is pie crust, a buttery dough that forms the base (and sometimes topping) for pies. Pastry originally meant "food made from paste," and paste meant "dough."
Vocabulary lists containing pastry
Stairway To Leaven: Baking Vocabulary
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Voilà: Croissant Lingo
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The result: I took an inexpensive yoga class at a beautiful studio, and I ate the most delectable pastry I’ve ever had.
From MarketWatch • May 19, 2026
During a postwar cocoa shortage in the 1940s, an Italian pastry chef named Pietro Ferrero had the genius idea to combine the scarce resource with an ingredient his town had in abundance: hazelnuts.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 9, 2026
A Persian baklava dressed with golden shards of filo pastry.
From BBC • Mar. 28, 2026
She spoke of pastry shops selling sweets so enticing that barely any survived the trip home.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 24, 2026
“But you owe me for the entire tray,” the pastry man told Mother before storming away.
From "Tasting the Sky" by Ibtisam Barakat
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
