Tips for making the best pie dough

We often need shortcrust pastry dough or pie dough to prepare desserts or snacks. Although it is a traditional recipe, it is not easy to make, because the preparation requires delicacy and baker must pay attention to many small pitfalls. Delices and Gourmandises provides you with some tips for making the best pastry.

Use fat or butter?

Even if fat works well and is not subject to temperature variations it is adviable to use butter to obtain an incredibly delicious dough with an incomparable texture. In addition, a dough prepared with fat will be less flaky.

Use cooled ingredients

Ingredients,especially water and butter, should be really cold to make the perfect dough. It would be best to cut the butter into small cubes and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes. If the butter stays cold until baking time, the pastry will be perfect. Once in the oven, the butter will melt and create steam. Thus small pockets of air will appear everywhere in the crust, which will make the puff pastry delicious.

The recipe of shortcrust pastry dough (2 lowers of dough)

- 2 1/2 cups (625 ml) flour
- 1 teaspoon (5 ml) sugar
- 1 cup of unsalted butter (250 ml, or 1/2 pound) very cold, diced
- 1/4 to 1/2 cup (60 to 125 ml) of very cold water
- 1 teaspoon (5 ml) salt (you can reduce the amount according to your taste)

1- Put the flour, sugar and salt in the food processor bowl and whisk for a few seconds to mix.

2- Add the butter and close the bowl and whisk again. Make sure the food processor runs a few seconds at a time, as it should not mix everything at once. Keep an eye on the butter and stop the processesor when the pieces look like a pea.

3- Pour ¼ cup of water around the mixture. Wisk a few seconds at a time. When you get a pretty homogeneous dough, stop the processor in order not to undo the butter. In case the dough does not stand yet, add 15 ml (1 tablespoonful) of water at a time until the desired result is obtained.

4- On your worktop, spread a large sheet of plastic wrap. Pour half of the dough mixture onto the plastic wrap. Form a disc by crushing the mixture from the sides of the film.

5- Fold the plastic wrap to close it by compressing it around the disc of dough. Flip and flatten the disc in your hands. To compress the dough, flatten it lightly with the rolling pin.

6- Round off the edges by pressing on the dough using a ruler or scraper or other upright and hard utensil. This step is important, because if the edges are fragile and are not completely integrated with the mass, the dough may break when being rolled.

7- Refrigerate the dough disc for at least 1 hour before rolling and perform the same operation with the other half of the mixture. When the dough comes out of the fridge, wait 5 minutes before rolling it, because if it is hard, it may break.

Properly roll the dough.
- Take the dough out of the plastic wrap. On a work surface, spread some flour and also flour the rolling pin. Flour everywhere, but be careful not to overdo it to avoid compromising the texture of the dough. Roll the dough following the same technique: roll quickly then gently turn the dough. If you roll the dough continuously without moving or turning it, it will stick.

- If you use a 9-inch or 23-cm diameter pan to make a pâté or a pie, it will be better to roll the dough up to 13 inches or 33 cm in diameter. When the dough is rolled, approach the rolling pin and gently wrap the dough around it to easily transfer the dough to the pie pan.

- Press the dough into the mold and cut the excess leaving an edge of about 1 cm (1/2 inch) around. If you wish, you can make a nice border with your fingers or a fork, or by folding some dough on the edge of the mold.

- Put the dough for 15 min in the freezer and preheat the oven before preparing the toppings.

Pre-cook the dough

While the toppings do not need to be cooked in the oven, it is necessary to precook the pie shells. For this step, place a sheet of parchment paper in the bottom of the shells then fill the plate with dry peas (white beans, lentils ...) to prevent the dough from swelling and deforming.

Put in the oven for 30 minutes at 375 ° C then remove the paper and peas. To perfectly brown the shells, put them back in the oven for 5 minutes then let cool before filling.

The raw dough can be frozen and stored in the refrigerator for a few weeks. You can also freeze pre-cooked pie crusts.