Bake the perfect Shortcrust Pastry
The following recipe for a sweet shortcrust pastry can be the base for every pie, tart or tartlets you are about to bake from now on!
There are two reasons I publish this recipe: my new rolling pin and tartlet tins. Yes, I haven’t had a rolling pin before and I found these great loose bottom tartlet tins. So why not using them as often as possible?
You can use this recipe for savoury pies (quiches) as well. Just replace the sugar with a pinch of salt, you can use a salted butter if you like (but don’t have to) and omit the lemon zest.
But before you go on and try it yourselves, here are some shortcrust pastry tips:
- Keep the ingredients cold. Moreover, using a cold bowl can be considered as a bonus.
- Shortcrust pastry can be made either by hand, or using a food processor.
- Another important tip is to work the dough quickly and not to overwork it. Otherwise, its texture won’t be as crumbly as expected of a shortcrust pastry. This is why the processor method is preferred. Though it is possible to prepare the dough by hand. That’s what I did before I had a food processor, and I can’t recall any complains! Oh, and try to keep your hands cold before preparing it.
- The shortcrust pastry should be chilled for at least 30 minutes before rolling it out. It will also help the dough shrink less when baked. Ideally you should chill the shortcrust pastry after rolling as well.
- Preferably, you should roll your pastry on a cool surface (a marble surface is just perfect), lightly dusted with flour. When baking a sweet shortcrust pastry, I sometime dust with a little bit of icing sugar.
- Blind Baking: sometime we’d want to bake the shortcrust pastry without the filling. This is called Blind Baking. When baking blind, we need to put some weight over the pastry base, so it won’t puff or rise. This is where the baking beans come for our rescue. You should roll out the pastry and line it on your tin(s). Line it with baking paper and fill it with baking beans. Baking beans can be either ceramic or dried ones. I usually use red kidney beans as they seem to be the haviest available, relatively cheap and are re-useable.
- When should we blind bake? When the shortcrust pastry is to be filled with cold or unbaked filling. Such fillings are crème pâtissière, jam, cheese filling etc. My White Chocolate and Mascarpone tarts is a good example. Some recipes will ask us to blind bake the pastry for 5-10 minutes, and then add the filling and bake for further 10-20 minutes. It usually depends on the baked filling, and it is done when the pastry requires more baking time than the filling itself.
You’ll need:
- 23cm fluted flan tin Or 6 X 10cm fluted flan tins
- 175g plain flour
- 3 tbsp caster sugar
- 85g unsalted butter, chilled and diced
- 1 egg
- Optional: finely grated zest of half a lemon
How to:
(1) Place the flour, sugar, butter and lemon zest in a food processor
(2) Process until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs
(3) Add the egg and process until a ball is formed. At that point you stop processing
(4) Roll the pastry dough out, wrap in cling film chill for at least 30 minutes
(5) Line the pastry dough on a tin, then chill for further 20-30 minutes.
From this point on, you can continue baking according to your recipe, or bake blind, if necessary:
(6) Preheat the oven to 150c
(7) Prick the pastry several times with a fork
(8) Line the tin with baking paper and fill it with baking beans
(9) Bake blind for 10 minutes
(10) Remove the paper and beans and bake for a further 10 minutes
(11) Remove the tins from the oven and allow to cool
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