Guide
Allergens in puff pastry
Ready-made puff pastry contains wheat. All-butter puff pastry also contains milk, because butter is milk. Margarine puff pastry often still contains milk, and sometimes soya. Egg wash brushed on top adds eggs.
Reviewed against official guidance.SourcesNot legal advice.
The usual pattern
The dough is wheat flour, water, salt and fat laminated in layers. The fat is the variable. An all-butter sheet and a vegetable-fat sheet from the same bakery supplier are different labels.
What to check in puff pastry
| What you see | What it means on a PPDS label |
|---|---|
| Wheat flour | Cereals containing gluten |
| Butter | Milk |
| Some bakery margarines | Milk and soya |
| Egg wash | Eggs — a separate ingredient you add |
How to write it on the label
PPDS food needs the name of the food and a full ingredients list, with the 14 allergens emphasised every time they appear. The Food Standards Agency’s PPDS guidance is the practical reference. A typical ingredients fragment looks like this — yours must follow the specification of the product you actually use.
Example fragment
Wheat flour, butter (milk), water, salt.
Where it shows up
Sausage rolls, pies, cheese straws, vol-au-vents and pasties.
Egg wash forgotten on the label
The sheet’s ingredients stop at the dough. If you glaze with egg, egg is an ingredient of the pasty the customer buys.
Filo is not puff pastry. Filo is usually wheat and oil, without butter, unless the spec says otherwise.
Specification first
Brands differ. Treat this page as the usual pattern, then match the label to the tub, bag or recipe in front of you.
Questions
Is all-butter pastry milk?
Does vegetable fat mean no milk?
Official sources
Everything on this page traces back to these. Where they and we disagree, they are right — tell us and we'll fix it.
- Introduction to allergen labelling for PPDS foodFood Standards Agency / GOV.UK
- Labelling guidance for prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) food productsFood Standards Agency / GOV.UK
- Food allergen labelling and information requirements technical guidanceFood Standards Agency / GOV.UK