Shortcrust pastry tricks and tips for making it at home, one of the most important and loved basic doughs in Italian pastry and beyond.
A basic preparation for tarts, cookies, and tartlets made with few and simple ingredients like flour, butter, sugar, and eggs, which, however, requires small precautions such as using very cold butter and handling it very little.
Additionally, resting in the refrigerator is crucial so that the butter cools down, making it easier to roll out and work with the shortcrust pastry.
The flour must be of a weak type like 0 or 00, meaning a weak flour for desserts, and the butter can be used from 30% to 70% compared to the amount of flour, meaning the more butter, the more crumbly the pastry.
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Up there, where the magnifying glass is, you can click on “SEARCH”🔎, you can write the ingredient you find when you open the fridge, or from your pantry,
you will have the chance to enter hundreds of recipes with the ingredient you chose.
YOU’LL BE AMAZED.
The one we propose today is the traditional shortcrust pastry with granulated sugar, perfect for many desserts, below I leave you some ideas to use it and then right after the photo let’s find out how to prepare the Shortcrust Pastry Tricks and Tips!!!
- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: Very cheap
- Rest time: 1 Hour
- Preparation time: 20 Minutes
- Portions: 8
- Cooking methods: Electric oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: All seasons
Ingredients Shortcrust Pastry Tricks and Tips
- 2 1/2 cups 00 flour
- 2/3 cup butter
- 2/5 cup granulated sugar
- 2 egg yolks (large)
- 1 pinch salt
- to taste lemon zest
Preparation Shortcrust Pastry Tricks and Tips
Just as important as the amount of butter is the amount of sugar; in our recipe, we use 30% sugar to have a base that doesn’t crumble.
However, you can go up to 60%, but in this case, it would be advisable to use powdered sugar to obtain a smoother and more workable dough.
Prepare the shortcrust pastry starting from the flour, then make a well on a pastry board or work surface.
Cut the very cold butter from the refrigerator into pieces and place it in the middle of the well along with the sugar, lemon zest, and salt.
Work it with the tips of your fingers until you have a sandy mixture, or crumbs.
Add the egg yolks and work the shortcrust pastry very quickly, just long enough to combine the ingredients.
In this way, the dough does not overheat, and the gluten does not develop, so the dough will be soft.
Then form a ball by wrapping it in plastic wrap and let it rest in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.
This way, the butter solidifies and makes the pastry much easier to roll out and work with.
After the resting time, take the dough from the refrigerator and roll it out on the floured work surface.
Roll it out with the floured rolling pin and if you want to prepare a tart, roll the dough onto the rolling pin and then unroll it into the mold.
An additional tip is to roll the dough out between 2 sheets of parchment paper and then remove the top one and place it with the bottom one into the mold.
Doing so will prevent it from sticking to the work surface, avoiding the need for more flour.
Shortcrust pastry tricks and tips, as I mentioned in the introduction, is also perfect for tartlets and cookies cut with the most whimsical cutters you want.
How to Store Shortcrust Pastry
You can keep it in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours wrapped in plastic wrap.
