HOW to make Shortcrust Pastry Recipe – Tart Shells

There are 5 basic types of Pastry Shortcrust pastry, Filo pastry, Choux pastry, Flaky pastry and Puff pastry. Shortcrust pastry is a type of pastry often used for the base of a tart, quiche or pie. Shortcrust pastry can be used to make both sweet and savory pies.

Shortcrust pastry is made up of flour, fat and a liquid to bind, the fat generally being about half the amount to flour.The perfect pastry is soft and ‘short’, or crumbly.  The traditional method of making shortcrust pastry involves rubbing the fat with the flour using your finger tips to get the mixture to a bread crumb consistency. The ingredients are kept cold and handled as lightly as possible. This ensures that the fat remains distinct/ separate in the crust, and when it heats during baking, steam is released, resulting in the pockets that make a flaky, crispy crust. Water is only added once the fat and flour are thoroughly combined. This ensures that the flour granules are adequately coated with fat and are less likely to develop gluten.

I find that using a food processor keeps the ingredients much cooler than using your fingers also reduces the time.

Ingredients for the Shortcrust Pastry
2 cup – All purpose flour / Wheat flour (Fridge cold )
1 cup – Cold butter cubes (Fridge cold)
1 tbsp – Powdered sugar
1/2 tsp – Salt
2 to 4 tbsp – Ice cold water

Method

To make Tart shells take flour, salt, sugar in a food processor jar.

Add the butter cubes and pulse it bit by bit till the whole mixture resembles bread crumbs.

Transfer these crumbs into a mixing bowl.

Add  ice cold water bit by bit and bring the dough together and make a ball.

Place this dough in between two layers of clingfilm sheets and roll it into a small disk and refrigerate for 1/2 hour.

Preheat the oven to 180°C

Take out the refrigerated dough disk and roll it little more to make it bigger than the tart pan. Roll the dough in between two grease proof paper. Keep the thickness to 5mm.

Carefully place the rolled dough over the tart pan and press it well to the edges.

Fill the pan with baking beans ( you can use uncooked beans or rice too. In that case use a place a layer of cling film on the dough and then fill it with beans or rice. Otherwise it gets tough to remove the rice specially ) and bake it for 8 to 10 mins or till it is nice and gold in colour . The baking time varies from oven to oven.

Remove and let it cool for 10 mins before you remove the baking beans.

As soon as you take out the tarts from the oven, trim the edges with a sharp knife, keeping the tart pan as the reference. You can trim the edges before you put the tart into the oven, but the tart tends to shrink in size and hence the height of the tart will reduce.

You can make tart shells in advance and store it in an airtight container for a week. You can make French Lemon Cream Curd Tart with these shells.

Get that perfect pastry:

Keep flour, butter and even the bowl that you will be using refrigerated to make sure the ingredients stay cold while you work with it.

Less water makes the pastry crumbly and more water makes the pastry tough. Hence when adding the water to the butter and flour, use very cold water and add it a tablespoonful at a time.

It is important to wrap the pastry in clingfilm (plastic wrap) and let it rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before rolling it out completely. This will keep the fat from melting by overworking it.

Don’t use too much flour to roll the pastry. Infact roll it in between two grease proof paper. If using flour, dust the work top very lightly and turning it between every two rolls.

Don’t roll the dough too thin or too thick.

Blind Bake the tart if you are making fruit pies or with puddings and cream fillings. Baking blindis the process of baking the crust 3/4th the time without the filling and then baked completely along with the filling.