In baking

Baking

Baking is the technique of prolonged cooking of food by dry heat acting by convection, and not by radiation, normally in an oven, but also in hot ashes, or on hot stones. It is primarily used for the preparation of bread, cakes, pastries and pies, tarts, quiches, cookies and crackers. Such items...

, a flaky pastry (also known as a quick puff pastry or blitz puff pastry) is a light, flaky, unleavened pastry

Pastry

Pastry is the name given to various kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder and/or eggs. Small cakes, tarts and other sweet baked products are called "pastries."...

, similar to a puff pastry

Puff pastry

In baking, a puff pastry is a light, flaky, leavened pastry containing several layers of fat which is in solid state at 20 °C . In raw form, puff pastry is a dough which is spread with solid fat and repeatedly folded and rolled out and used to produce the aforementioned pastries...

. The main difference is that, in a flaky pastry, large lumps of shortening

Shortening

Shortening is any fat that is solid at room temperature and used to make crumbly pastry. The reason it is called shortening is because it prevents cross-linkage between gluten molecules. Cross linking is what causes doughs to be sticky. Seeing as cake is not meant to be sticky, shortening is used...

(approximately 1-in./2½ cm. across), are mixed into the dough, as opposed to a large rectangle of shortening with a puff pastry. The dough is then rolled and folded in a similar manner to the puff pastry.

The chunks of shortening keep the rolled particles of dough in the pastry separate from each other, so that when the dough is baked they become flakes. This creates a different texture from a puff pastry, where rectangles of dough and fat are rolled and folded together in such a way that the result is a number of uniformed sheets of pastry.
It is used to make pasties, turnovers and sausage rolls and plaits.