How to make crumbly shortcrust pastry. Fragrant pumpkin pie

1. Butter, cold temperature, not frozen, cut into slices.

Note: the dough can be given special taste and aroma. To do this, the composition is introduced vanilla sugar, lemon or orange grated zest, crushed chocolate, cocoa powder, ground or split nuts, cinnamon, etc. Add additives when kneading the dough and chill it in the refrigerator with them.

The dough prepared according to this recipe can be frozen and stored in the refrigerator for several weeks. During this period, it will not lose taste... Thaw it at room temperature.

1. Cut the butter into small pieces... Put in a warm place and let them soften a little.
2. Sift flour through a sieve. Mix all dry ingredients: flour, granulated sugar, vanilla sugar.
3. Add oil. Mix everything, rubbing the ingredients with your hands. Shortcrust pastry does not knead as vigorously as yeast. Movements should be easier. If it turns out to be too dense and dry, you need to add 3 tablespoons of cold water.
4. Form a ball, roll it in flour. Put the dough in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.

Do not keep the dough in the cold for longer than the specified time. The butter will harden and be more difficult to roll out.

If you need to make a pie with jam or berries, a small part of the dough is sent to the freezer for an hour and a half. When the dough is frozen, rub it on a grater and spread the filling on top. It turns out an appetizing ruddy shavings.

The easiest recipe for shortcrust pastry with chocolate

It can be used to make chocolate basket cakes or chocolate tart.

Required Ingredients:

• 3 cups flour;
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 2 eggs;
• 350 g butter;
• 20 g of cocoa powder or 50 g of chocolate;
• Soda;
• Salt.

Sugar is replaced with powdered sugar to soften the texture of the dough. It can be prepared by pitching sugar in a coffee grinder.

1. Beat eggs and icing sugar with a mixer.
2. Add a tablespoon of cocoa or finely grate chocolate. Previously, it is placed in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes to harden.
3. Add melted butter to the mixture.
4. Sift the flour, add a pinch of soda to it.
5. Mix all ingredients. Knead the dough. Form a ball out of it, wrap it in cling film... Place in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.

A properly prepared shortbread dough is dry and crumbly. To prevent it from becoming too hard and evenly baked, products from it should be no more than 1 cm thick. The temperature in the oven should be high, at least 220 ° C. Optimum is 220-240 ° C.

Now you will always have at hand a natural preparation for delicious homemade baked goods.

This is an intermediate option between sand and puff pastry... It is crumbly, but strong, therefore it is suitable as a base for big pies and quiches.

In a recipe, you can add the word “cold” before every ingredient and item, and this should not be neglected. The water should be ice cold, the oil should be as hard as stone. Bowls, knives and even the board on which you will work with the dough is a good idea to hold in the freezer. Better to move the cutting table away from the battery or open a window.

Secret shortcrust pastry In oil. It is thanks to him that the baked goods are crumbly.

All these efforts are made to keep the butter from melting. Because otherwise you will end up with a completely different product.

The classic way

Ingredients

• 200 g butter;
• 300 g flour;
• a pinch of salt;
• 50-100 ml of water.

Preparation

Cold butter chop on small cubes and put in the freezer for 15 minutes. At this time, sift the flour and salt, sprinkle it on the table or board. Place the butter cubes on top, sprinkle generously with flour and chop the dough with a knife or two.

It is important to touch the oil with your hands as little as possible: body heat will quickly melt it, the consistency will not be what you need.

When the butter and dough combine and turn into small grains, add water little by little, kneading the mass into a plastic ball. Put it in the freezer for 15 minutes. Then roll out the dough, put the filling, for example, and send it to the oven.

Lazy way

Technological progress does not stand still, why not use it in cooking. You will need the same ingredients and a food processor with blade knives. It is not necessary to chop the butter into small cubes: the device will cope on its own. Put butter, flour into the bowl and beat. The main thing is not to overdo it, in the end you should get all the same grains.

Top up gradually ice water until the dough begins to collect into a ball. Further instructions are the same as in the classic recipe.

Shortcrust pastry can be stored in the freezer for several weeks.

Additives

Retreat from basic recipe can. Here are some ideas:

1. Place 50-100 g sugar in batter for sweet pie.
2. Substitute 30 grams of flour for the same amount of cocoa for a chocolate dough.
3. Add up to half a cup of finely chopped nuts.
4. Flavor the mixture with citrus zest or vanilla.

This recipe will give you more plastic dough which is convenient to roll out. Baking from it crumbles less. By the way, in culinary disputes, some confectioners refuse to call sand chopped dough... They believe that only with the help of such a recipe can you get classical basis for tarts and baskets.

The oil should not be cold, but chilled. It is impossible to explain how one state differs from another. Just remove the food from the freezer one hour before cooking.

Ingredients

• 100 g butter;
• 100 g of sugar (preferably powdered sugar);
• 250 g flour;
• 1 egg (or 2 yolks).

Preparation

It is better to mix the components with a culinary spatula or spoon, and connect your hands only on the last stage when you need to collect the dough into a ball. Mash butter and sugar, add flour, then an egg.

If you have a food processor, delegate all of these responsibilities to it.

You can chill the dough and then cut it up. You can first give it the desired shape, and then send it to the freezer. It is important that it gets into the oven cold.

3. Curd shortcrust pastry

This dough is less capricious in work than its counterparts without cottage cheese, and less high-calorie, since fermented milk product replaces half of the oil.

Ingredients

• 100 g of cottage cheese;
• 100 g butter;
• 180 g flour;
• ½ teaspoon of baking soda;
• ½ teaspoon of salt.

Preparation

Rub the cottage cheese through a sieve, grate the cold butter. Combine both ingredients with a fork, add flour, baking soda and salt. Knead the dough quickly until homogeneous mass, put in a bag and refrigerate for an hour.

What to do next

If there is a pie on the menu, then roll the dough to the size of the mold, pierce it several times with a fork so as not to swell, cover with parchment paper and fill it with a load. Special heat-resistant balls or beans, peas can act as a weighting agent. This structure is baked for about 15 minutes at 180 ° C. Then remove the load, lay out the pie filling and cook until tender.

It is better to choose the filling adjusted for the sugar content in the dough. Unsweetened minced is suitable for quiches with filling, pies with meat and vegetables. The dough with added sugar will be the basis for fruit and berry

The baskets are baked in the same way, only the cooking time must be reduced in proportion to the reduction in the size of the cakes. Cookies and other small items are enough to lightly blush in the oven, otherwise they will be too hard.

Surely, many have noticed that some types of baked goods - cakes, cookies, pastries - have an unusual crumbly structure, similar to sand.

Such products are baked from shortcrust pastry. Its recipe differs from other types of dough, but also at home with a great desire and observance of elementary rules sand base for pastry dishes you can prepare yourself.

Shortbread dough opens up a huge potential for creativity! Try to cook everyone's favorite "nuts" with boiled condensed milk inside (yes, they consist of shortcrust pastry), beautiful cake soaked sour cream sauce with strawberries or dessert sausages, and the variations of cookies are simply endless: with chocolate, marshmallows, in the form of funny figures, wicker baskets and even with the addition processed cheese.

Shortcrust pastry - general principles and methods of preparation

How to make "golden" loose dough at home? In fact, everything is very simple - you have your hands, and the rest will follow! So, the first rule to learn: shortbread dough must be prepared with large quantity fat and sugar. It is the oil that gives the product its characteristic friability. Enveloping the flour, it does not allow its parts to tightly connect and stick together.

For greater porosity, leavening agents such as baking soda or ammonium carbonate. Flour should contain an average percentage of gluten, otherwise the baked goods will turn out to be a little too long. If you take flour with a low percentage of gluten, there will be the opposite effect - the products will quickly crumble.

Traditional recipe shortcrust pastry preparation is based on the following principles:

- flour is sifted with a slide on a cutting board;
- put sugar, soda quenched in lemon juice, vanilla and butter cut into small cubes on top;
- butter is chopped with a sharp knife along with the rest of the ingredients, eggs are added at the end;
- the dough is kneaded with hands, then it is removed for an hour in cool place, and then - used for the intended purposes.

Now let's decide on the amount of ingredients used. For cooking classic recipe we need: three glasses of flour, 300 gr. butter (butter), a glass of sugar (powder), two eggs, soda on the tip of a knife, a spoon lemon juice and vanilla.

Shortcrust pastry - food preparation

All components (eggs, butter, flour), inventory (including a cutting board, rolling pin) and devices used must be strictly chilled, otherwise the dough will lose its "zest", and the baked goods will eventually lose the desired structure. The kneading time of the product is also reduced to a minimum.

Remember: dry ingredients are always mixed with flour, and liquid ingredients with an egg, and only at the end they are combined. In some variations, part of the flour for making shortbread dough may be replaced with ground nuts, grated almonds or starch. Another important nuance: remove the finished dough from the refrigerator only as needed - in portions.

In addition to the basic recipe for sweet shortcrust pastry, there are alternatives that have been obtained as a result of culinary experiments. The recipes described below will help not only diversify your table, but also get real pleasure from joint, family creativity.

Recipe 1: Shortcrust pastry with potatoes

This dough fits perfectly into salty pies - with meat or vegetable filling.

Ingredients:

- 200 gr. flour
- 200 gr. boiled potatoes
- 150 gr. butter
- one egg
- salt - about 1 tsp.
- a spoonful of sugar

Cooking method:

Mix flour (sifted) with salt, sugar, then add the egg. Knead chilled potatoes in mashed potatoes (or three on a grater), add to the mixture, put pieces of butter. Chop the resulting mass finely with a knife until crumbs, and then knead with your hands until the lumps disappear. Roll the dough into a ball and send it to the cold for 40-60 minutes, before use.

Recipe 2: Shortcrust pastry with cottage cheese

Goes well with fruit and berry filling, as well as with chocolate, condensed milk and walnuts... We select cottage cheese fresh, fatty, but not liquid.

Ingredients:

- 300 gr. flour
- 200 gr. curd
- 200 gr. drain. margarine (butter)
- one egg
- a pinch of salt
- two tables. lies. sugar (fine)

Cooking method:

Rub the cottage cheese through a sieve, then cool it along with other components. Mix flour with salt, sugar. Break the egg into the core. Spread the cottage cheese and pieces of butter over the flour and, without wasting time, chop with a knife until crumb, after which we bring the dough to homogeneity with our hands. Next - in the refrigerator, and go!

Recipe 3: shortcrust pastry with cheese

Try to make such a dough for fish pie, potato filling- you will certainly be satisfied.

Ingredients:

- 200 gr. flour
- 200 gr. hard salted cheese
- 150 gr. oil drain.
- a pinch of salt and sugar
- a pinch of ground pepper
- one egg

Cooking method:

Pour flour in a heap on a cutting board. Sprinkle with salt and sugar on top. In the middle of the flour, make a depression and break an egg there. Rub the cheese on coarse grater(by the way, do not forget to cool it first) and distribute it over the surface of the flour. We do the same with the pieces of butter. Chop everything with a knife, bring the dough with our hands to readiness (as quickly as possible). Ready base for pies, roll it into a ball, send it out into the cold and take it out as needed.

Recipe 4: Shortcrust pastry with sour cream

Perfect foundation for cakes, pastries, confectionery sausages, cookies and other sweet baked goods.

Ingredients:

- three glasses of flour
- 200 gr. drain. oils
- one and a half cups sour cream (medium fat)
- two or three tables. l. Sahara
- egg
- on the tip of the knife soda
- vanillin

Cooking method:

Mix sugar, soda, vanillin with flour, add butter, egg (one), sour cream in slices and chop to crumbs with a knife. Next, we finish the dough to softness and uniformity with our hands, roll it into a ball and, wrapping it with cling film, put it in frost until demand (for 1-2 hours).

- The shortcrust pastry must be rolled out in even, thin enough layers so that it bakes well. The optimal thickness is from 3 to 7 mm;

- Partial replacement of whole eggs with yolks alone increases the friability of products. This approach is especially relevant when using flour with a high level of gluten;

- Baked layers of shortcrust pastry should be pierced in several places before being sent to the oven in order to avoid the appearance of ugly bubbles on their surface from the secreted carbon dioxide;

- The baking tray for shortbread must be dry. It is not necessary to grease it as the shortbread dough does not stick to the bottom when cooked. Optimum temperature for baking - from 220 to 250 C.

Shortcrust pastry is easy to prepare. But to make it perfect, you need to know some secrets. In this article I will write how to make sweet shortbread dough, from which it will be possible to create a classic curly cookies, and tartlets, and tart, and baskets. Such dough can be prepared for future use and stored in freezer up to 3 months.

In addition to the recipe for the dough itself, I will write how to bake delicious gingerbread cookies, tangerine tart, classic shortbread cookies from this dough.

This dough is perfect. The shortbread dough itself should resemble wet sand in structure, in finished form it turns out to be crispy and crumbly. This dough can be used to make biscuits, tarts and tartlets, cake baskets and cakes.

In this recipe, I will show you how to knead the dough correctly so that it rolls out well and does not break after baking. I will also share the secrets of making shortbread dough.

Ingredients:

• cold butter - 300 gr.
• icing sugar or sugar - 150 gr. (4 tablespoons with top)
• eggs - 2 pcs.
• sour cream - 1 tablespoon
• salt - 1 pinch
• flour with low content gluten - 600 gr.

Step by step preparation of shortcrust pastry.

Secret number 1. The butter should be cold. It is from such oil that a loose dough structure will turn out. Leave the oil out of the refrigerator beforehand to soften it. And all the more, do not drown him. Melted butter will not make a good shortbread dough of the desired texture. It will be sticky and gooey.

1.Grate the oil cold. Do this quickly so that the oil does not heat up from the warmth of your hands. Otherwise, it will be difficult to rub it, it will float.

1. Add powdered sugar to the grated butter. You can also put sugar, but the powder is better rubbed with cold butter, there will be no grains. Mash butter and icing sugar with a fork. Also do this quickly so that the butter does not melt.

Secret number 2. Powdered sugar should be exactly 2 times less than butter. A lot of sugar will make the dough crunchy and the biscuits less crunchy.

1. Beat the eggs into the dough. Beat in one egg first, stir, then beat in the next.

Secret number 3. Place 1 tablespoon in the dough. sour cream. It will make the dough more elastic, it will not crumble. But excess sour cream will also harm: the dough will float and lose its necessary consistency.

1. After the eggs, add 1 tbsp. sour cream and mix in the same way with a fork.

Put in a pinch of salt, stir quickly. Throughout sweet pastries put very little salt, because it better reveals the taste of sugar and gives a new flavor note.

Secret number 4. Shortcrust pastry requires flour with a low gluten content (less than 20%). This flour is made from soft varieties wheat. If you do not have such flour, then use this advice. Take a glass ordinary flour, pour 2 tbsp. flour, put 2 tablespoons instead. starch. The result is a low gluten mixture.

1. For 300 gr. butter you need to put 600 gr. flour, that is, a ratio of 1: 2. If there is too much flour, the dough will turn out to be hard, it will not work out of it to mold the necessary product. Sift flour and add to butter base, stir quickly. When the dough already looks like a crumb, knead it with your hands, just not for a long time, otherwise the cookies will not be so crispy. Ready dough it turns out quite tight.

Put 1 tsp in the cookie dough. baking powder, you do not need to put it in the tart dough.

1. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to cool (you can also for 2 hours). Immediately, the dough cannot be rolled out, dry and wet ingredients must react, then the dough will be elastic and pliable.

How to make various baked goods from shortcrust pastry.

Above, the process of making a dough from 300 gr was described. oils. For this amount of oil, you need to take 600 gr. flour. I will divide this oil base into 3 equal parts (100 grams of oil). It turns out for each part of 200 gr. flour. From the first part we will make classic shortcrust pastry cookies, from the second part - tangerine tart, from the third - gingerbread cookies with chocolate.

Raw dough can be made ahead of time and frozen in the freezer. There it can be stored for several months.

Making shortbread gingerbread.

Additional ingredients:

• ground ginger - 1 tablespoon without a slide
• baking powder - 1 tsp without a slide
• nuts and chocolate for decoration

As you can see additional ingredients dry, so they must be mixed first with flour, and then combined with an oil base. So, in 200 gr. flour (per 100 gr. butter) add 1 tbsp. ground ginger and 1 tsp. baking powder, mix. 200 gr. flour is 6 tbsp. with a slide. You can also add vanilla or vanillin if you wish.

For this baking, it is better to use baking powder, not baking soda, because baking soda acts immediately, and baking powder gradually, during the baking process. Since our dough will still be cooling, an instant reaction is not needed.

Mix the dry mixture with the butter mixture, knead the dough, just don't need to knead the shortbread dough for a long time. Wrap in plastic wrap to keep the dough from chapping and refrigerate (30 minutes to 2 hours).

After half an hour, take out the dough, roll it out on parchment about 5 mm thick. Cut out the desired shapes with tins and bake on parchment at 200 degrees for 15 minutes.

If you wish, you can decorate the cookies with chocolate with nuts. To do this, take any nuts and chop them (you can do this with a rolling pin). Take any chocolate, just not porous. Melt it in a water bath, do not overheat, otherwise it will exfoliate.

When ready-made biscuits cool slightly, dip half of it in chocolate, and then in nuts. Place on parchment and set aside to set.

The cooked liver is very aromatic and tasty.

Mandarin tart.

Additional ingredients:

• eggs - 4 pcs.
• starch - 40 gr. (2 tablespoons)
• tangerines - 4-8 pcs.
• lemon - 1 pc.
• sugar - 150 gr. (8 tbsp.)
• butter
• almond flakes - for garnish
• powdered sugar - for decoration

From tangerines and lemon peel will be needed - 1 tbsp. and juice - 250 ml

In a meat base with 100 gr. oil add 200 gr. sifted flour. Baking powder does not need to be added to these baked goods, as in cookies. Knead the base with flour until crumbly, then quickly knead the dough for 1 minute. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least half an hour.

While the dough is cooling, you can prepare the cream.

Stir the eggs with a whisk until smooth.

Pour boiling water over tangerines and lemon for a few seconds. Next, remove the fruit from the water and wipe it off with napkins. The next step is to grate the tangerine and lemon zest on the smallest grater. Rub, turning the fruit in a circle. Make sure that the white part does not rub off, only orange is needed for the zest, otherwise the filling will taste bitter. In total, 1 tbsp is needed. zest.

If desired, citrus zest can be replaced with finely chopped candied fruits. Or not use it at all. You can also put the zest in the dough rather than in the cream.

Squeeze the juice from fruits without zest. Do this in any way, the main thing is that the seeds and pulp do not get into the juice. You can grind the pulp (remove the seeds in advance) in a blender, and then squeeze through cheesecloth or a sieve. Or squeeze the juice through a sieve using a fork. For the cream you need 250 ml of juice.

Combine the juice and citrus zest in one bowl. Add sugar to them, stir. Next, pour in the stirred eggs, also bring to a homogeneous state. You don't need to whip for a long time, just put everything together.

To prevent the cream from burning, it must be brewed in a water bath. To do this, boil water in a saucepan. Place the cream on top of the boiling water in a bowl or saucepan. Cook, stirring occasionally, to prevent the eggs from curdling, until the foam is gone and the cream begins to thicken a little.

When all the foam is gone, put butter in the cream, melt it.

Dissolve the starch in cold water until a homogeneous gruel (for 2 tablespoons of starch, take 6 tablespoons of water). Add the starch to the cream and stir. Heat the cream until thickened for a few more minutes. Then set it aside to cool.

Never drop dry starch to thicken anything. Be sure to dilute it in cold water.

When the dough has cooled, remove it from the refrigerator. Take a form with high sides. Roll out the tart dough thinly, about 2-3 mm thick. There are two ways to form a cake:

1. Place the mold on the parchment and cut a circle along the bottom of the mold with a knife. Place the dough on this circle of parchment and roll it thinly over this piece. Transfer the rolled dough along with the parchment into a mold. Knead the dough with your hands, making the sides. It is not necessary to lubricate the mold additionally, the dough is greasy and will not burn.
2. Roll out the dough thinly, with a diameter larger than the bottom of the mold. Using a rolling pin, transfer the dough into the mold, lay it down and cut off the excess dough hanging from the edges with a knife, form the sides.

To prevent the dough from rising during baking, you need to make it heavier. Professional chefs use special stones for this. At home, you can take beans or other dry cereals (peas, buckwheat, rice).

Cover the tart completely with parchment (the sides must also be covered) and pour the beans into the mold, about 500 gr.

In an oven preheated to 200 degrees, put the tart to bake for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, the rim of the tart will be golden brown. Remove the baking dish, remove the parchment and beans, and bake for another 5 minutes. Then let the tart cool in the mold.

When the tart has cooled, remove it from the mold. To do this, gently turn the baking dish over to avoid breaking the baked goods. Fill the tart with cream. Put in the refrigerator for half an hour to completely solidify the cream.

When the cream hardens, decorate the tart almond flakes and powdered sugar.

Cut the tart gently and enjoy the delicious taste!

Classic shortbread cookies (white and chocolate).

Additional ingredients:

• baking powder - 1 tsp
• cocoa - 1 tablespoon

To make two kinds classic biscuits, divide the oil base from 100 gr. oil into 2 more parts. In the first part, put flour (100 gr. For 50 gr. Butter) and baking powder - 0.5 tsp.

The second part also needs flour and baking powder, but also cocoa. Cocoa is not added additionally, but replaces one spoonful of flour. That is, put flour on 1 tablespoon. less (only 2 tbsp.) and 1 tbsp. cocoa. All dry ingredients must be sieved to enrich them with oxygen. First, mix the flour, cocoa and baking powder separately, then add this dry mixture to the butter base.

Knead the dough and put it in the refrigerator, remember to wrap it in plastic wrap.

When the dough has rested, you can roll it out, about 5 mm thick and cut out cookies with cookie cutters.

In order not to clog the dough with additional flour, roll it between two pieces parchment paper... It is also good to use a cold board for this (also hide it in the refrigerator along with the dough) and a cold rolling pin.

Cover the baking sheet with parchment; you do not need to grease it with oil, since the cookies are quite fatty. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Sprinkle the cookies with sugar and bake 15 minutes until browning.

Let the liver cool on a baking sheet. The taste of this cookie unfolds well with milk.

Prepare shortbread dough according to this recipe and you will have a masterpiece! Write in the comments what kind of baked goods you got. I wish everything to be delicious!