The following is a list of pastries, which are small buns made using a stiff dough enriched with fat. Some dishes, such as pies, are made of a pastry casing that covers or completely contains a filling of various sweet or savory ingredients.

There are five basic types of pastry dough (a food that combines flour and fat): shortcrust pastry, filo pastry, choux pastry, flaky pastry and puff pastry. Doughs are either nonlaminated, when fat is cut or rubbed into the flour, or else laminated, when fat is repeatedly folded into the dough using a technique called lamination. An example of a nonlaminated pastry would be a pie or tart crust, and brioche. An example of a laminated pastry would be a croissant, danish, or puff pastry. Many pastries are prepared using shortening, a fat food product that is solid at room temperature, the composition of which lends to creating crumbly, shortcrust-style pastries and pastry crusts.

Pastries were first created by the ancient Egyptians. The classical period of ancient Greece and Rome had pastries made with almonds, flour, honey, and seeds. The introduction of sugar into European cookery resulted in a large variety of new pastry recipes in France, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. ^{[citation needed]} The greatest innovator was Marie-Antoine Carême who perfected puff pastry and developed elaborate designs of pâtisserie.^[1]