I'm looking for something that works like pastry (malleable before baking, rigid after baking, mild unobtrusive flavour) that is transparent or translucent.
The idea is to use for topping savoury pies, where the base and sides are regular shortcrust pastry and the top is something similar but translucent, so that you can have a selection of different pies of the same size and shape on a sharing plate and people can see which is which – without leaving the top open so not exposing the contents to the elements.
Since things like glass noodles and translucent dough wrappings for Chinese dumplings exist, I'm sure it must be possible – maybe based on corn flour, or pure starch like glass noodles? Apparently translucent rice is also a thing. The closest I've found are recipes like this one for transparent Chinese dumpling dough – but these aren't very transparent and are gooier than would be ideal alongside pastry.
If there's no such thing that has an established name or recipes, it would be great to have a few basic principles on how it might work: for example, how the pure starch that glass noddles are apparently made from could be sourced and adapted to be pastry-like without losing translucency? Perhaps simply making a starch dough, glazing it with oil then baking might be enough to make it work like pastry?
Best Answer
With great skill, a true artist could do what you describe with Thai/Vietnamese rice paper, the dinner plate sized, extra thin ones, like for Fresh Spring Rolls.
I will never apply for the job, I promise.