Shortbread pastry

 Recipe from chef patrick

Ingredients :
Here is the recipe of the 'shortbread pastry' ('pâte sablée' en French), sometimes forgotten from the pastry cook books but however, the best one, for me, for making tarts.


Shortbread pastry for a tart for 6 to 8 persons :

250 grams (1/2 lb) wheat flour
125 grams (1/4 lb) caster sugar
1 small bag of vanilla flavoured caster sugar
125 grams (1/4 lb) soft butter (unguent texture)
1 egg
1 pinch of table salt

Direction :
1/Put both sugars, salt and the egg (yolk + white) into a salad bowl and blend during 30 seconds.
2/ Add the flour at once and quickly blend, then pass small parts of the pastry between your fingers to make the pastry be sandy and keep aside each part of the sandy pastry until you have used all of it. Put the whole onto the working plan in round with a hole in the middle (we call it a "fountain" in French cooking language).
3/Put the soft butter in the hole of the pastry and incorporate it into the pastry with your hand to knead it ; make a compact ball of the pastry and keep it into a bowl covered with a damp cloth in the fridge for 1 hour and a half approximately.

The pastry is now ready to be used (stop eating it : it is not cooked yet !...)