Perfect Pastry Crust (Pâte Sablée)
Four mini unfilled baked pastry crusts
It’s hard for me to walk past a pastry case in general, but one containing tarts and pies? Nearly impossible. You’ll notice a difference between a sablée style crust and others, as it’s more cookie like. Almost like a buttery sugar cookie in tart form. Amazeballs right?
This recipe is the perfect base for your pies, fruit tarts, frangipanes, or honestly just to bite directly into out of the oven (cooled of course, we’re not animals). Take your time with it - rub that butter in - and respect the process, you’ll be rewarded with melt-in-your-mouth crust at the end, I promise.
Equipment:
Tart pans: two 4.5-inch pans or one 9-inch pan
Pie weights or baking beans/rice*
Yields: One, approx. 11inch rolled circle of crust, making one large tart or two small tarts with spare crust for the top.
Ingredients:
111g (8 tbsp) unsalted butter, cubed
38.5g (1/3 cup) powdered sugar
1 large egg yolk, beaten
1 egg beaten (for brushing crust), optional
4.5g (1/2 tsp) salt
160g (1 1/4 cups) all-purpose flour
Coarse sugar for top crust sprinkling, optional
Directions:
Place all dry ingredients in a bowl and give them quick stir to combine.
Add butter*, gently stir to coat, and rub the butter through the dry ingredients to combine until fine, sand-like consistency.
Add beaten egg yolk and cut through mixture with dough scraper.
Gently compress dough with dough scraper to begin to bring it together into a ball, then dump the dough and any “dust” onto your work surface.
Using a smearing technique, gently smear out a few sections with dough scraper - pushing section out - and then scrape back together, towards dough ball. Keep an eye on your dough, once there are no more dry spots stop mixing.
Gently form your dough into ball of sorts and place between a folded piece of parchment paper (roughly 12-13 inches wide when folded) and roll into an 11-inch* circle.
Refrigerate dough for 30 minutes, making sure to keep it flat.
If doing smaller pies, invert pie tin onto dough and cut to shape, leaving some excess to fit around rim.
Lightly loosen edges of the dough so it fits into mold. Use a bit of excess dough with a little bit of flour to gently press dough into edges, making sure the dough is a consistent thickness throughout.
Use a rolling pin to roll off any excess dough from the rim. Press in any thick spots remaining.
Fork dough at the bottom of the tin and place back in the fridge for another 10 minutes.
Place a cookie sheet in the oven and preheat to 320F CONVECT.
Once the temperature is reached, remove the cookie sheet and place the pie(s) onto it. Crinkle a bit of parchment paper and lay it into the the pie tin(s), then fill with rice/baking beans and gently even out.
Place the cookie sheet with pie(s) on top back into the oven on a rack placed in the top third and blind bake for 11-13 minutes, until edges just begin to brown.
If baking again with a filling:
Gently to avoid tearing, remove weights/beans/rice and return to oven another 4 minutes. Cool completely and then remove the crust from the tart pan. Simply place the pan over a stable circular object, smaller than the rim of the pan (for example, an inverted glass for a small tart pan) and gently push the rim of the tin down to release. Use a knife or your fingers to remove the base of the tin from the bottom of your crust.
Once you’re ready to add your filling, pour it into your cooled shell and let the filling sit and “dry” before adding any desired toppings (raw top crust/streusel). Then finish baking per filling instructions.
If only baking once: Remove weights/beans/rice and return to oven for another 5-10 minutes until center of crust is nicely golden in color.
Notes:
*I prefer a smaller baking weight like rice or tiny beans as it helps fit into the cracks of the tart/pie pan better than the larger weights
*Butter should be slightly soft but still firm. If at any point it starts to feel like it’s melting, cover the bowl completely and place in the fridge for 5 minutes to firm.
*Do not roll the crust past a maximum of 12 inches otherwise it will be too thin and will likely break as you try to lay it into your pan as well as be more crumbly in your tin.
*This recipe is adapted from this one on the kitchen
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