Shortcrust Pastry

This is an extremely easy and versatile shortcrust pastry dough, which I’ve found works with both sweet and savoury bakes.

This shortcrust pastry recipe also makes enough for two 25cm tarts, so you can freeze one to use later if you don’t need both. This dough can be blind-baked when using it to make tarts with pre-cooked fillings like custard and ganache, and used from raw when the filling also needs to be baked.

Blind Baking a Tart Crust:

1. Preheat your oven to 220°C. Line the prepared and chilled tart crust with baking paper, making sure it fits snugly into the sides of the crust and right up the edges.
2. Fill the lined crust with dried beans, rice or baking weights, making sure they cover the base evenly.
3. Bake for around 12-15 minutes, until the crust is barely golden. Remove from the oven and carefully lift the dried beans, rice or baking weights out of the pastry and transfer to a bowl or plate.
4. Place the crust back in the oven and bake for another 5 minutes, until the edges are golden and the base of the crust is dry.
5. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely before filling and removing from the tin to serve.

Shortcrust Pastry

I always use salted butter when baking because that’s what I always have in the fridge or freezer, If you’re using unsalted butter then add 1 tsp to the ingredients below.

Ingredients

• 2.5 cups all-purpose flour
• 230g butter, cold and chopped
• 1 tsp granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup ice cold water

Method

1. Place the cold butter, flour, and sugar in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until you have the consistency of bread crumbs.
2. Slowly add the water and continue pulsing until the dough comes together.
3. Remove the dough and place on a lightly floured surface, then split the dough in half and pat each half into a flat disk.
4. Wrap each disk in wax paper and place it in the fridge to chill for at least an hour or so. Freeze the extra dough disc for later if you won’t need it straight away.
5. Grease and lightly flour a 23 – 25cm tart tin with a removable bottom, set aside.
6. Remove the chilled dough from the fridge and on a lightly floured surface, roll out until you have a
7. circle, about 35 cm in diameter.
8. Lay the rolled out dough into the tart tin, gently pressing the dough into the pan, pinching off any extra that comes up over the sides.
9. Place in the fridge to chill again before blind baking or baking from raw with a pie filling.