Tart Pastry
Salt Lake City Showroom, Cathie Mooers
I have tried tons of tart pastry dough's and this one is still my favorite. It has a great shortbread flavor and texture. Makes one tart shell in a removable bottom tart pan. Fits in a 9" or 10" pan or 8 individual tarts1 2/3 cups unbleached bread flour (yes you can use all-purpose flour, but I like the texture of the bread flour)
¼ cup fine baking sugar
½ tsp sea salt
10 tbs cold unsalted butter, cubed
2 cold egg yolks
2 tsp pure vanilla or 1 tsp pure almond extract
1 tbs ice water (only if you need it)
Keep everything cold, if you have too; pull your ingredients out of the refrigerator as needed. It will keep the dough from being tough. Sift the flour, sugar and salt into a food processor, pulse a couple of times, to make sure all the ingredients are blended. Cut butter into 20 pieces, place into the processor, and pulse a few more times to create chucks of butter in the flour.
In a small bowl whisk together egg yolks and vanilla, now pour into the food processor, again pulse a few times to blend. Pulse until you have a mixture that looks very similar to coarse corn meal. Your dough is ready to pour onto a clean counter top when you pinch it and it stays together. If not, add a tablespoon of ice water. Pulse again. Now pour onto a clean counter, work quickly using the very heel of your hand to smear the mixture together, you do not want the butter to melt. Form into a disk, wrap with plastic wrap and chill about 30 minutes or until firm.
Preheat Oven to 425 degrees. Between two pieces of plastic wrap, roll out the dough, big enough to fit in a 9”-10” tart pan. Pull the plastic off the top of the dough, gently place the dough over the rolling pin, now pull off the remaining plastic wrap and gently roll the dough onto the tart pan, pressing the dough into the sides. Trim the edges with the rolling pin by rolling it over the top of the tart pan, press the dough into the pan, if need to roll the rolling pin over the top again, to leave a clean edge.
lacing parchment or tin foil over the tart dough, weighing it down with pie weights. Cook for 8 minutes, remove the parchment/foil and weights, prick about 5 times with a fork and continue cooking for another 4 minutes for partially baked crust or eight to ten minutes for fully baked. Cool on a wire cooling rack.
