Pastry Foundations · Dessert
Pate Sucree by the Sanding Method
- Intermediate
- 25 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, toasted, nutty warmth throughout.
Ingredients
- 250 g plain flour, 100 percent
- 150 g cold unsalted butter in 1 cm cubes, 60 percent
- 95 g icing sugar, 38 percent
- 30 g ground almonds, 12 percent
- 50 g whole egg, beaten, about 1 medium
- 2 g fine salt
The skills inside
Pie crust & blind bakingResting dough: the pause that does the workRubbing fat into flour
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg · nuts
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rub the cold butter into the flour, salt and ground almonds with fingertips until it looks like damp sand with no lump bigger than a grain of rice.
- Stir through the icing sugar, add the egg and cut it together with a scraper only until it clumps; the moment it forms a ball, stop working it.
- Flatten to a 2 cm slab, wrap and rest at 4C (39F) for 2 hours at least, overnight for a shell that will not move. 120 min
- Roll to 3 mm between two sheets, line the ring without stretching, press into the corner with a ball of offcut, and freeze the lined ring for 20 minutes. 20 min
- Blind bake at 160C (320F) for 18 minutes with paper and beans, then 8 to 10 minutes uncovered until it is sandy gold right into the corner. 18 min
- Brush the hot shell with beaten yolk and return it for 2 minutes to seal the inside against a wet filling. 2 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Pie crust & blind baking 29 recipes
- The shell goes into the oven cold and the oven is fully up to heat, so the structure sets before the fat has time to melt out of it.
- Lined and weighted right into the corners rather than heaped in the middle, so the sides are held against the tin as the fat softens.
- Docked where it is not meant to puff, and the base stays flat rather than lifting into a dome under its own steam.
- The weights come out and the base gets dry heat of its own before anything wet arrives. Pale and damp is not baked, and a filling will not finish it.
- The edges are set and coloured and the shell releases from the tin rather than gripping it.
Where it goes wrong It went in warm, or the weights only filled the middle. The sides slump down the tin before the pastry sets, so the case is shallower than it should be, the filling overflows it, and the base is still raw underneath: the soggy bottom, arrived at three ways at once.
Rubbing fat into flour 47 recipes
- The fat is cold when it starts and still firm when the rubbing stops, and the bowl has not warmed under the hands.
- Stopped early, while it still looks like coarse crumbs with pieces of fat visible in it, not worked on to a smooth even sand, which means the pieces have gone.
- Nothing is greasy or glossy and nothing has smeared into a paste against the side of the bowl.
- Liquid added last and only enough to bring it together: pressed, it just holds, with no wet patch and nothing sticking to the hand.
- Rested cold before it is rolled or shaped, so the gluten relaxes and the fat firms again after being handled.
Where it goes wrong The fat was too warm, or it was rubbed until the mixture looked uniform. Once the fat has melted into the flour there are no solid pieces left to steam apart in the oven, so the bake is sandy or tough instead of flaky, and nothing done later puts those layers back.
At the Table
- The Pour
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The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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