Shortcrust Pastry
Shortcrust lives by one rule: the fat has to stay fat. Cold cubes of butter rubbed into flour keep the gluten from linking into a network, which is why the baked crust shatters instead of stretching. The moment the butter melts in your hands the pastry turns tough, and nothing later will save it.
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Rest
- 1 h 15 min
- Total
- 2 h
- Servings
- 8
- Level
- Medium
- Per serving
- 295 kcal
Ingredients
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What to use instead
Two tablespoons of cold cream in place of the yolk give a slightly more tender, paler crust.
Makes: one 24 cm tart case, 8 slices
Shopping list
The ingredients for the servings you chose — copy them or send them to a messenger. Tick what you already have at home: only the rest goes on the list.
Method
Oven
180 °C · top and bottom heat, no fan
With a fan: 160 °C
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Step 1: Chill everything
The butter should be at 5–7 °C: give the cubes 15 minutes in the freezer. Drop ice into the water. In a warm kitchen, chill the bowl as well.
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Step 2: Rub in the butter
Rub with your fingertips, or pulse briefly in a processor, to a coarse crumb with pea-sized flakes of butter still visible. Those flakes are what make the crust flaky.
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Step 3: Add sugar and salt
Stir the icing sugar and salt into the crumb. Icing sugar rather than granulated: sugar crystals do not have time to dissolve and leave small holes behind.
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Step 4: Yolk and water
Add the yolk and one spoonful of ice water and bring it together with a knife or spatula. Add the second spoonful only if the dough refuses to clump: less water means less gluten.
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Step 5: Press, do not knead
Press the dough into a flat disc with the heels of your hands in a few movements. Kneading develops gluten, and the case then shrinks down the sides of the tin.
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Step 6: One hour in the fridge
Wrap and chill for an hour. The flour finishes hydrating and the butter hardens again; skip this and the sides slide to the bottom within five minutes of baking.
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Step 7: Roll and blind bake
Roll to 3–4 mm and lay it into the tin without stretching (stretched pastry pulls back). Prick the base, freeze for 15 minutes, then bake at 180 °C for 15 minutes with weights and 10 more without, to a sandy gold.
Tips & variations
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Tip
The 1-2-3 rule by weight: one part sugar, two parts butter, three parts flour. From there you can scale the pastry to any tin.
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Variation
For a savoury tart, leave out the icing sugar and add another pinch of salt and a spoonful of cold water. Everything else stays the same.
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Swap
Two tablespoons of cold cream in place of the yolk give a slightly more tender, paler crust.
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Storage
Three days in the fridge, three months in the freezer. Freezing it already rolled into the tin is easier — it bakes straight from frozen.
Nutrition
| 1 serving | Whole dish 8 servings | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 295 kcal | 2,360 kcal |
| Protein | 4 g | 32 g |
| Fat | 18 g | 144 g |
| Carbohydrates | 30 g | 240 g |
Approximate values calculated from standard ingredient data.
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