A Pastry Chef’s Secret for the Crispiest, Flakiest Pie Dough Ever

I first delved into the intricacies of pâte brisée, a French tart dough, throughout pastry college, after we used it as the bottom for a tarte aux pommes, a conventional French tart with paper-thin apple slices organized in a circle, shingled over each other. It was buttery and flaky, and jogged my memory of my favourite American pie crust. Like pâte sucrée and pâte sablée, this basic French dough is a flexible base for pies, tarts, and different pastries. Whereas pâte sucrée and pâte sablée are candy and finest paired with fruit or frangipane, brisée’s impartial taste works equally effectively for desserts because it does for savory bakes like quiches, vegetable tarts, or canapés.

Buttery, flaky pâte brisée requires only a handful of fundamental elements: usually flour, butter, salt, water, and typically a contact of sugar. Some recipes additionally incorporate egg or egg yolk for a variation often called pâte à foncer, an egg-based dough that’s barely sturdier and simpler to work with however much less tender. I choose pâte brisée’s flaky texture, and as an alternative of compromising texture for ease of workability, I’ve skipped the egg within the dough for the lightest, crispest pastry doable. However to not fear—my recipe beneath has suggestions for working with the crust, and it’s actually not too finicky.

The Constructing Blocks of Pâte Brisée: Sablage and Fraisage

There’s no manner round it: To make good pâte brisée, you must get your palms soiled—or quite, buttery and floury. This recipe employs two key French pastry practices. First, there’s sablage, the movement of rubbing chilly butter into flour along with your fingertips, which coats the gluten proteins in fats, minimizing gluten growth for a crisp, tender crust. Whereas we would like some gluten growth for construction, we don’t need an excessive amount of, which might end in a tricky, brittle crust. Then, there’s fraisage, a method that entails utilizing the heel of your hand to smear the dough throughout a tough floor, distributing fats and moisture. The method creates lengthy ribbons of butter, and because the shell bakes, these ribbons of butter soften, creating little pockets of steam that create the flaky layers within the crust. They’re going to be particularly apparent after freezing, so do not be stunned by the marbled white look—it means you are in your technique to good pâte brisée.

Why It’s Necessary to Blind Bake—and Easy methods to Do It

Blind baking, or baking the pastry shell earlier than you fill it, serves a number of functions. First, it permits the crust to bake evenly and ensures that it may possibly help a moist filling with out leaking or turning into soggy. Blind baking additionally signifies that the crust can be utilized for fillings that won’t be baked themselves, akin to curds, mousses, or cream-based pie fillings. 

To blind bake, line the unbaked pastry shell with parchment (I wish to crumple the paper so it conforms to the form of the pan), then fill it with weights, akin to pie weights, raw rice, sugar, or dry beans. Bake till the perimeters flip very gentle brown, take away the parchment rigorously to keep away from damaging the pastry, then observe the recipe you’ve got chosen to fill and end the pie or tart. You possibly can partially blind bake pâte brisée, add a filling, then bake the remainder of the way in which, or absolutely bake it for chilly fillings like fruit curds and pastry lotions.

Any flat or fluted tart pan will work for pâte brisée, however I like to recommend selecting one with a detachable backside. This useful function makes it simpler to take away the fragile pastry shell, minimizing the chance of breakage.

Another tip: Should you plan to bake a number of tart shells in the identical session, preserve loads of additional dried beans or your pie weight of alternative available. By no means use sizzling beans or weights for blind baking, as they may soften the butter within the crust earlier than you’ve even had an opportunity to place the pastry within the oven.

5 Key Strategies to Hold in Thoughts for Making the Greatest, Flakiest Pâte Brisée

1. Loosen up and chill. You’ll discover there’s quite a lot of chilling within the recipe beneath. That is intentional: chilling relaxes the gluten—making the crust extra tender—and retains the butter agency, which is important for a crispy, flaky crust. 
2. Take note of the steadiness of flour and water. Flour your rolling pin and work floor to stop the dough from sticking, and likewise coat your fingertips with a skinny layer of flour earlier than urgent the dough into the pan. Do not go overboard, although—an excessive amount of flour will throw off the dry-to-liquid ingredient ratio, making a dry, crumbly dough and a tricky crust.
3.  Do not overwork the dough. Extra kneading promotes gluten growth, and an excessive amount of gluten can toughen the pastry and trigger it to shrink because it bakes.
4. Take note of the oven. Pâte brisée isn’t a “set it and neglect it” recipe. Test the tart shell each jiffy (with the oven gentle on and door closed!), particularly close to the tip of the bake. I additionally advocate utilizing visible cues—not simply the clock—as a information. The pastry must be deeply golden-brown throughout; the period of time this takes will fluctuate based mostly in your oven, the pan you’ve got chosen, and your blind baking method.
5. Dock the pastry. After eradicating your chosen pie weights, prick small holes within the backside to stop the pastry from doming because it continues to bake. I like to recommend utilizing a fork to dock tart shells, because the utensil can simply attain the perimeters of the pan.

Easy methods to Use Pâte Brisée

You need to use pâte brisée anyplace you’d use a home made pie crust, akin to cherry or apple pie. As well as, this versatile dough works effectively for a spread of conventional French pastry recipes akin to tarte amandine (almond cream tart), tarte aux fruits (fruit tart with pastry cream), and tarte aux pommes (apple tart). Along with candy recipes, pâte brisée makes a superb base for savory vegetable galettes, quiche, onion tarte tatin, and cheese and vegetable tarts. You possibly can even use it to make canapés or press it right into a muffin tin or mini tart tins to make appetizer-size parts of any quiche or tart.