ALL-PURPOSE PIE DOUGH-PâTE BRISéE FINE

All-Purpose Pie Dough-Pâte Brisée Fine image

You will note the mixture of flours and fats here. Without them, our general American all-purpose flour, which is relatively high in gluten, can give you a brittle rather than a tender crust. But if you have "pastry flour," you can use that alone, along with all butter rather than a mixture of butter and vegetable shortening.

Yield dough for two 9-inch round shells or a 14-by-18-inch free-form shell

Number Of Ingredients 6

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (measured by the scoop-and-level system; see page 97)
1/2 cup plain bleached cake flour
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 sticks (6 ounces) chilled unsalted butter, diced
4 Tbs chilled vegetable shortening
1/2 cup ice water, plus droplets more if needed

Steps:

Drop the flours, salt, and butter in to the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Pulse 5 or 6 times in 1/2-second bursts to break up the butter. Then add the shortening, turn on the machine, and immediately pour in the ice water, pulsing 2 or 3 times. Remove cover and observe the dough, which will look like a mass of smallish lumps and should just hold in a mass when a handful is pressed together. If too dry, pulse in droplets more water.
Turn dough out onto your work surface, and with the heel of your hand rapidly and roughly push egg-size blobs out in front of you in 6-inch smears. Gather the dough into a relatively smooth cake; wrap in plastic, and refrigerate at least 2 hours (or up to 2 days), or you may freeze it for several months.
SWEET DOUGH FOR DESSERT TARTS. Use the same formula, but cut the salt down to 1/4 teaspoon and include 2 tablespoons sugar.
Dough with a high fat content like this one softens quickly at room temperature and becomes difficult if not impossible to work with. Whenever this happens to you, stop where you are and refrigerate it for 20 minutes. To make things easier for me, I bought a marble slab that now lives in the refrigerator; I take out that chilled slab and use it as a work surface any time I'm doing a dough.
Bake your tart shell in a bottomless buttered flan ring set on a buttered pastry sheet, or in a false-bottomed cake pan or fluted pan, or on a buttered upside-down pie plate or cake pan. Or you can fashion a free-form shell on a buttered pastry sheet.