Sweet dough For Tarts And Tartlets | Easy Recipes

Sweet dough - Easy Recipes

Sweet dough is one of the essential pastry recipes. Crispier and more resistant than shortbread, it is now found as a base in a large number of pies and tarts.

The possibilities offered by this dough are very wide: strawberry tart, lemon tart, coffee tarts, caramel tarts, citrus pie and even in a classic pear and chocolate tart.

The recipe I offer is that of Pierre Hermé, which other chefs like Cédric Grolet also use.

It is a pie crust that owes its success to its strength and crispness. However, to prevent it from softening and becoming pasty on contact with cream, sometimes you have to spread a thin layer of melted chocolate, white or dark, isolate it and guarantee its crispness.

It is also possible to brown it with an egg yolk, which will make your dough golden and shiny, while also isolating it.

You can use this recipe to make two pies about 26 cm in diameter or 12 small tarts. If you don't want to use it all, you can freeze the rest of the dough for a future recipe.

Two sweet dough pie shells

for 6/8 people (circles of about 26 cm)

• Preparation:       30 min
• Rest:                  2 h
• Cooking:           20 min
• Difficulty:         Easy

Material:

• A pastry robot (optional, you can make this dough by hand)
• A pie ring
• A rolling pin
• Ingredients:
• Sweet dough :
• 150 g butter
• 95 g icing sugar
• 30 g ground almonds
• 60 g egg (1 egg)
• 2 pinches of salt
• 250 g flour (preferably type 55)

Preparation of a Pate Sucree:

Equipment :

For starters, I always make this recipe in a food processor. If you don't have one, you can do it by hand using the exact same steps.

To bake the sweet dough I recommend using a pie ring, which makes unmoulding much easier. If you have the choice, the perforated circles on the sides ensure better cooking.

I then place it on a ventilated silicone (Silpain or Airman depending on the brand), itself placed on the rack of my oven.

This avoids having to prick your pie shell, it will not swell and will be cooked much better with this type of silicone which lets the dough breathe during baking (remember to place it on a rack).

If you often bake pies, I recommend it!

Dough :

In the bowl of your food processor fitted with the foil, mix the butter until it is soft. You can skip this step by taking butter at room temperature (but you don't always think of removing the butter first).

Then add the icing sugar, ground almonds, egg and salt. Run your food processor at medium speed until your mixture is smooth.

Add the flour and knead at medium speed. It's best to knead as little as possible and stop as soon as the flour is incorporated into the mixture, even if it doesn't form a nice ball of dough.

The more you mix, the more crumbly, difficult to work with and brittle when baked. It is also to avoid this that it is preferable to use a type 55 flour, which will have less tendency to shrink during cooking.

Then place the dough on a cling film, wrap the dough well and crush it with your hand to form a disc (or something like me ...).

This allows your dough to be very compact, to have about the right shape to spread afterwards. The thinner it is, the faster it will cool in the refrigerator.

Let your sweet dough sit in the fridge for an hour. This is important, otherwise, you will not be able to work it.

The sinking of the Pate Sucree:

Flour your work surface and your dough and spread it out, taking care to make it make a 1/8 turn between each stroke of the roller. This allows you to know if there is still enough flour underneath, the dough should always slide well and not catch on your worktop, but also to keep the basic round shape and avoid ending up with a square afterwards. having spread its dough.

Method 1:

Roll your dough on your rolling pin and roll it out onto your circle or pie pan. If she doesn't panic, the advantage of the sweet dough is that it is very easily welded together and that it is not visible after cooking.

Take the edge of the dough protruding from the circle and slide it while pressing down at the same time with the fingers of your other hand so that it is firmly against the edge of the circle. If you push the dough in from the inside, it may tear.

Then with your fingers take care by pushing gently to make a nice right angle of dough at the level of the circle. This is called "baking" a pie.

Finally with a small knife, cut the excess dough by sliding the blade against your circle or pie pan.

Method 2:

You can also cut out a circle that matches the bottom of your pie using your circle as a template.

Also, cut long strips of dough equal in width to the top of your circle. If they are too soft, let them harden for 10 minutes in the refrigerator.

Then just come and apply them on your round dough base.

The best of the best is to have a dough base that is a little smaller than your circle, so your strips of dough will slip into this small space and the solder will not be visible after baking since it will be under your pie.

The cooking :

Finally, put your pie in the fridge. It must still rest for an hour.

Resting your sweet dough helps prevent it from shrinking during cooking. If you are really in a hurry you can cook it this way, but be aware that its size will decrease and the edges may fall off.

The sweet dough is cooked at 170 ° C in hot air.

The cooking is variable depending on what you are going to do next with your pie. Prefer a slightly shorter cooking time, 10 to 15 minutes if you then want to brown it (see below) or if you then garnish it with an almond cream which will ask you to re-bake your pie shell.

If your pie won't be ironed anymore, bake it for 15-20 minutes. This should be adapted to suit your oven.

Obtain a perfectly smooth pie:

If your pie or tart is not perfectly smooth on the bottom or sides and you are concerned, you can remove the excess dough.

For this, you have to scrape the tart on a sieve, or a colander, a bit as if you were sanding it. It is of course easier and less risky with tartlets since they are easier to handle.

Obtain a golden and shiny paste:

Once your dough is cooked and possibly smoothed, you can apply egg yolk gilding.

Just beat an egg yolk and apply a thin layer on your pie, as if to brown a galette des Rois. You can only brown the edges for aesthetic reasons: your dough will be golden and extremely shiny.

If you apply this foil to the bottom of your pie, it will also insulate it from the moisture of the cream.

Bake your pie again for 5 minutes to set and dry your gilding. Don't worry if it looks a bit dull when you take it out of the oven, the end result won't be appreciable until your pie has cooled.

Tips to remember:

• Once the flour is incorporated, you should work the dough as little as possible to prevent it from becoming crumbly, so stop your mixer as soon as the mixture is smooth.

• To facilitate the rest, your dough should have a round and flat shape when filmed.

• If your dough breaks, tears and has holes in your circle: do not panic, seal with a little dough, making sure that the thickness remains the same everywhere. During cooking, the dough will weld together and you will hardly see anything once it is cooked.

• It is important to respect the last pause time so that this pie dough does not shrink during baking.