RECIPE: The little black dress of pastry
You know that summer-in-the South feeling: It’s hot. You’re tired. You have a fridge full of delicious peak season fruits and vegetables, and you’ve planned a little dinner party with friends. You want to make something show-stopping but with very little effort.
Enter the little black dress of the pastry world: flaky tart dough, aka pâte brisée. She’s simple, and she goes with everything. She’s flaky, buttery and accessible to even the most novice and impatient bakers.
This little pastry number can be utilized in any season, but she is wonderful to have on hand during those lazy, hot days of summer. Think juicy blueberry galettes, savory tomato and feta crostadas, sumptuous peach turnovers, and maybe even a jam-filled hand pie. The options are endless with this versatile dough that you can batch up, make ahead, and keep in the freezer indefinitely.
Pâte brisée is also a helpful introduction to the techniques required for more advanced traditional French pastry. Cutting in cold butter, folding water into the cold buttery mass, and even that slight hint of lamination during rolling make this dough a cornerstone for many other classic French pastries, including puff pastry and the more intimidating laminated croissant dough.
The key to this dough is the temperature of the butter. Too warm, and it will yield a saggy, heavy tasting, greasy product. Too cold and it won’t properly bake into layers, denying us those nice flakes. Butter contains water,and when cut into flour at the right temperature, the dough expands in the oven, releasing a little steam that creates a slight rise while keeping the buttery flavor and texture intact.
Quality all-purpose flour such as King Arthur is best for this recipe. I always use a high-fat. European-style butter such as Plugra, which yields a smoother texture and superior flavor than lower-fat American butter. As I say at the bakery, you get out what you put in, so it’s always good to start with high-quality ingredients whenever possible.
Flaky Tart Dough
Fill the dough with your favorite sweet or savory prepared tart filling. A fruit filling can be as simple as berries or sliced fruit lightly macerated with granulated or brown sugar and citrus zest to taste.
- 3 cups plus 2 tablespoons (455 grams) all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon salt, plus more for egg wash
- 1 cup plus 5 tablespoons (300 grams) very cold butter
- ⅔ cup very cold water
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon heavy cream or milk
- In a medium or large metal bowl, whisk together flour and salt.
- Using a bench scraper, pastry cutter, 2 knives or your fingertips, cut cold butter into flour. If using your fingers, only use the tips; your palms will heat up the butter.
- Pour half the cold water into mixture and fold gently, working around the outside of the bowl to form the dough into a shaggy ball. Don’t mix too hard. Add the rest of the water, a bit at a time, until dough sticks to itself as opposed to the side of the bowl. You might not use all the water; hydration depends on seasons, especially the humidity fluctuation in the South. Once it looks like a shaggy dough ball, pat into flattened dough disc, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate at least 1 hour.
- When ready to bake, heat the oven to 375 degrees.
- On a well-floured surface, roll dough out to 1/2-inch thickness. Cut the dough to preferred size: for single-serving galettes and turnovers, use a 3 1/2-inch round cutter; for a 9-inch galette or tart, use the rim of a 9- inch tart pan or pie pan.
- Shape by folding and crimping up the sides to create a well for desired filling in. Fill single-serving galettes and turnovers with 1 to 1 1/2 cups filling; fill 9-inch galettes or tarts with 3 to 4 cups filling. (A lot of the summer fruit is water-heavy and will bake down substantially, so fill higher than you think.)
- In a small bowl, prepare an egg wash by whisking together eggs, heavy cream and a pinch of salt. Brush sides of tart with egg wash and bake until golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes for smaller-sized tarts and 30 to 35 minutes for larger tarts. Makes 5 to 6 single-serving tarts or 2 full size tarts.
Nutritional information
Per serving: Per serving, based on 6 single-serving tarts: 618 calories (percent of calories from fat, 62), 9 grams protein, 50 grams carbohydrates, 2 grams fiber, 43 grams total fat (26 grams saturated), 169 milligrams cholesterol, 729 milligrams sodium.Sarah Dodge is an Atlanta-based bread baker, pastry chef and baking instructor. She is the owner of Bread is Good, which offers bread subscriptions to the general public and wholesale baked goods to local markets and restaurants.
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