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
- Mixing Bowl
- Dough Scraper
- Fork
- Parchment Paper
- Rolling Pin
- 2 4.5-inch pans or one 9-inch pan
- Pie weights or baking beans/rice*
Ingredients
- 8 tbsp unsalted butter slightly soft but firm
- ⅓ cup powdered sugar
- 1 large egg yolk beaten
- 1 egg beaten for brushing crust, optional
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- Coarse sugar for top crust sprinkling optional
Instructions
- Place all dry ingredients in a bowl and give them quick stir to combine.
- Add butter*, gently stir to coat. 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. Make sure it lays flat!
- If doing smaller pies, first grease and flour your tart pan(s).Then invert tin(s) 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. Bring together and re-roll any excess dough, if making smaller tarts
- 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. 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 a mixture of uncooked rice and dry beans, as it helps fit into the cracks of the tart/pie pan better than the larger weights. Once you're done using, let them cool and place in a jar to reuse again for your next bake!
*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 kitchn
