the basics: pâte brisée and pâte sucrée

I’ve been meaning to do this a while, but I never was in the mood to document such a simple recipe. But I did a few weeks ago, so here it is, finally! My source is the none other than Pierre Hermé and Dorie Greenspan, mes desserts préférés, p. 236 and 239

First, you gather your ingredients:

The ingredient recap:

370g butter, room temperature

90g whole milk, room temperature

1 egg yolk, lightly whisked, also at room temperature (*as you can see i forgot to do this. oh well.)

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

490g all-purpose flour

Step 1: Cream the butter. I love love the swirls you get when you cream butter, they’re always so elegant, and always different. Like snowflakes. But much heavier and richer.

Step 2: Then add everything but the flour. That would be your milk, egg yolk, salt, and sugar. Mix it until it’s nice and homogenous.

Step 3: Add your flour in 3 or 4 portions without interrupting your mixing. Just keep it going. And stop the moment you see that everything is together – no need to continue and do more work!

*i really should have switched attachments after creaming the butter in the first step. I continued to use the creaming attachment instead of the mixing attachment. The creaming one has sharper edges that cuts into the butter, while the mixing one is blunt and less harsh on the dough. But I forgot. And in the end, my crusts still came out delicious, so no need to freak out!

This recipe makes enough for three 26cm tart pans, or four 24cm tart pans. I like to divvy up the dough into thirds (i eyeball it… even though i should weigh them), then put a ball of dough on a piece of plastic wrap and pat it down into a circle. I then wrap it up, write PB on it, and repeat 3 times. Then I move my stack of nicely wrapped tart dough into the freezer until I’m craving some quiche.

And the exact same process for pate sucrée, just with different ingredients.

285g butter, room temperature

150g powdered sugar, sifted

50g powdered almonds (or almond flour, same thing.)

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs, lightly beaten

500g all-purpose flour

1. Cream the butter. 2. Add the sugar, almonds, salt, extract, and eggs and mix it in nicely. 3. Add the flour in 3 or 4 portions and mix just until the moment when you don’t see anymore flour. Stop, and divide, wrap, flatten, and freeze! Make sure you label them, because a few weeks later, you might forget which dough is savory and which dough is sweet… which wouldn’t be the end of the world, but may cause you one less headache in life :)

BONUS picture! this is why i don’t bake at night, they always come out with such ugly colors. but i had some leftover sweet dough, so i made a mini tart. with figs. and goat cheese. so then you have: warm tart crust, warm figs, and warm goat cheese mmmmm then you realize life is good, nothing else matters, and everything will be okay!