A homemade tart crust makes the best tart. That is, if it turns out well! Making tart and pie crusts can be tricky. I would venture to guess that most people would appreciate a simple, not-so-finicky tart crust recipe in their repertoire that is delicious every time. Well, this Pâte Sucrée recipe is it!
I love this sweet pastry tart crust! It comes through for me again and again, whether I do everything exactly right or not. Foolproof and forgiving, it’s a great tart crust for beginners, or if you just want a reliable shortcrust dough that you can count on. The sweet pastry dough delivers an excellent crust with a tender crumb reminiscent of a shortbread cookie. This is the kind of crust you want to eat even without a filling.
Pâte Sucrée, a sweet shortcrust pastry, is a classic tart crust used by bakers all over France. It’s deliciously neutral and ideal to hold all sorts of magnificent fillings, including custards and fruits, as it keeps its crispness and shape perfectly.
I’ve been using this same recipe for sweet tart shells for years with all the dessert tarts and tartlets I make — house favorites such as French Pear Tart with Almond Cream, Lemon Tart, French Raspberry Tart with Crème Pâtissière and more. And it’s still my favorite.
Sweet Pastry Crust for Tarts
Did you know? The Mediterranean has a rich tradition of pastry — the addition of fat to a paste of flour and water. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Phoenicians used pastry. And crusts were already used extensively in ancient Rome.
Why You’ll Love this House Favorite Tart Crust
- Taste – Perfectly neutral, yet with incredibly full flavor.
- Texture – It has a crisp and tender crumb, yet doesn’t crumble apart. And it’s sturdy enough to hold fruits for days without getting soggy.
- Stands on its Own – The most enjoyable tarts have both a great filling and pastry. This crust is not just a vehicle for fillings — its flavor and texture stand on its own.
- Cookies! – This crust is almost like eating shortbread cookies — which is what I shape all the extra dough trimmings into to enjoy on special coffee breaks.
- Forgiving – This dough is easy to work with and is very forgiving. In all the years of making this pastry for tarts, it has never failed us.
Making Pâte Sucrée
There are many versions, and two main traditional methods, to making pâte sucrée, a sweet shortcrust pastry: sanding and creaming. And they have to do with how and when to work the fat into the dough, depending on what kind of crust you want.
In this recipe, we use the sanding method (Sablée) – but with a mixer – where you “sand” together (traditionally with your fingertips) cubes of cold butter and flour (and sugar, if present) until it becomes a sandy texture — coating the flour with fat before any liquid ingredients are added. The result is a crisp, crumbly and tender crust, and sturdy at the same time — perfect for all kinds of dessert tart fillings.
Sanding Method (Sablée)
1) “Sand” the flour, sugar and salt together with the cold butter.
“Sand”
2) Add and briefly blend in the egg yolk and cream mixture.
3) Transfer to a floured work surface.
4) Press together.
5) Roll out or pat into a disc.
Ingredient Notes
- Butter adds richness in flavor, but it also adds a kind of delicate, crumbly, micro-flakiness (taste it and see what I mean), achieved by sanding and coating the flour with cold butter. A good European-style butter with a higher butterfat content (82%), and thus less water content, is another factor that helps the crust stay stable and not collapse while baking. We often use Kerrygold, an Irish butter with a high butterfat content made from grass-fed cows.
- Sugar, besides the obvious sweetness, adds a tender, brittle, sturdiness to the crust. Granulated sugar inherently gives the crust a nice crystal texture. With powdered sugar — which makes the dough a little smoother and easier to work — the texture becomes slightly more refined, yet denser. Both granulated sugar and powdered sugar produce an excellent crisp crust.
- Egg yolk, or the lecithin in it, helps the dough hold its shape, while remaining malleable to roll out. The way hens have been raised influences the quality of the eggs. Look for pasture-raised or free-range.
- Cream is not traditional in shortcrust pastry, but it contributes to a tender texture, helping to prevent the crust from getting tough, or from getting elastic (which then, by nature, likes to shrink in the oven).
Why use
cold butter
for crusts?
Cold vs Soft Butter
Cold Butter = Flakiness
When cold cubes of butter are mixed into flour, the water contained in the lumps evaporates while baking, creating air pockets that result in a crumbly and flakier texture. The bigger the size of the lumps of butter, the more flakiness you get. Working the cold butter and flour into a sandy texture creates more of a micro-flakiness, more like a crunchy shortbread texture. (Like in this recipe.)
Soft Butter = Tenderness
When room-temperature-butter is mixed with flour, it coats the flour cells well, preventing them from bonding together to form gluten, which would make a tough crust. The result is a tender crust, but not so flaky.
Tips for the Best Pâte Sucrée
- We don’t want much gluten in our dough. We really just want a little gluten to help our pie shell stay together. That’s it. Any more gluten makes a tough crust and causes elasticity, which we like for bread, but makes our pie crust shrink. So to help prevent that:
- We want to add as little liquid — the enabler for gluten creation — as possible. There is no gluten in flour until you work water into it, which then joins with the proteins glutenin and gliadin in the flour to form gluten.
(glutenin+gliadin + water = gluten). - Don’t overwork the dough! Why? Because the more you work it, the more you help it form gluten. Working the dough produces heat, which is another factor that helps gluten form. So we want to work the dough as little as possible.
- We want to add as little liquid — the enabler for gluten creation — as possible. There is no gluten in flour until you work water into it, which then joins with the proteins glutenin and gliadin in the flour to form gluten.
- Hot Kitchen Tip: If your kitchen is less than cool (I’m not talking about decor) and you are planning on using a cutting board to roll out your dough, cool it off in the fridge for a while beforehand.
- Don’t butter the pan (even if your pan isn’t non-stick). It doesn’t need it, and its presence might encourage the crust to slide down.
- So the crust doesn’t slump while baking, take an extra second to make sure the dough is reaching into the corners and hugging the entire walls of the pan. Any gaps in the corners between the dough and the pan create opportunity for it to collapse. Yet don’t press. You want to gently ease it in place, so as not to flatten the dough.
Equipment Notes
- Tart Pans – I use and recommend a tart pan with a removable bottom. You can then remove the ring and transport the tart, still on its base, to a cake plate. For this reason, I also find it really convenient to have extra tart tin bottoms to go with each tart ring. (Some good examples of what I am talking about: Gobel tinned steel tart pan at Sur la Table, or Fat Daddios anodized tart pan at Amazon.)
- Plastic Dough Scraper – Very handy. Plastic is good for times when using metal would damage your work surface, for gently cutting, and for scraping up dough from your work surface or pans. (Something like this Ateco scraper is a good size.)
- Digital Kitchen Scale – Digital kitchen scales make measuring so much easier, faster and convenient! I use mine all the time for tart crust and everything else. If you’ve never used one and would like to make your life easier in the kitchen, I highly recommend it. Less bowls to clean later, fewer or no measuring cups have to get involved, which again, means less to clean. The more ingredients I need to add, the more my appreciation grows.
Notice I’m talking about digital, not the old-timey scales. Analog scales, although they can be romantic, don’t have the life-changing convenience that digital ones do, because they don’t have a tare button to zero-out the scale — which allows you to pour and measure sugar on top of already-measured-flour in the same pan without getting out pencil and paper, doing math calculations, using different bowls and so on.
My personal preference is for flat rectangular kitchen scales, so that I can store them in the cabinet vertically like a book (a digital scale something like this). However, I might just be the only one who stores their digital scale like that. There are other kinds that are great for leaving out on the counter.
Pre-Baking (Blind-Baking)
Pre-bake the crust without the filling according to how you’ll be using it:
- Fully cook the crust before for adding fillings that are either pre-cooked or don’t need cooking, like tarts with a pastry cream custard filling (like French Raspberry Tart) that have already been cooked and chilled.
- Partially cook the crust before adding fillings that need to be cooked in the tart shell. This is to ensure that the crust gets cooked all the way through, and to get a dry crisp crust that holds up well to moist fruit and cream fillings (like French Pear Tart with an almond cream filling that needs to be cooked).
Yes, as long as you prick air or steam holes in the bottom of the crust with a fork to prevent trapped air from puffing it up in the oven. Then, check on it after about 15 minutes of baking, and if needed, pierce the crust to deflate any air pockets. We tend to not use weights, because we like the opportunity to get more even cooking before covering up the center with filling. It’s also easier!
Recipe
Tools
- 9½" (24cm) round tart pan, ideally with a removable base.
Ingredients
- 4oz, 8 Tbsp unsalted butter, cold and cut into ½-inch cubes
- 2 Tbsp heavy cream
- 1 large egg yolk
- scant 1⅓ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- scant ¼ cup granulated sugar, (or scant 1/2 cup (50g) powdered sugar. See notes)
- ⅛ tsp salt
Instructions
- Cut the cold butter in ½-inch cubes and place back in fridge.
- Whisk together the cream with the egg yolk in a small bowl, and set aside.
Mix
- a) Mix the flour, sugar and salt on low speed in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment.b) Gradually add the cold butter, bring up the speed a notch, and mix until it resembles course sand, about 1½ to 2 minutes.c) Reduce speed, add the egg yolk cream mixture, and mix for about 30 seconds. Work the dough as short of time as possible (to prevent toughness and minimize shrinkage in the oven).
- Tip the dough onto a lightly floured work surface or Silpat. Press it into a mound, then pat or roll it out into a 1-inch (2.5cm) thick disk.
- If the dough is too soft or sticky, refrigerate for 10 to 15 minutes to firm up. (Or if more convenient, chill overnight wrapped in cling wrap. Then take out of the fridge and let soften for just enough time to become manageable.)
Roll Out & Rest
- a) Place dough on a lightly floured work surface or silpat. If the dough is too cold and unworkable, let it sit on the counter for about 10 minutes. (You can also pound the dough lightly once or twice with the rolling pin to help make it pliable.)b) Lightly dust dough with flour, and gently roll it out away from you a few times, not pressing down too hard.c) Lift and rotate the dough a quarter turn (if sticking, dust work surface with more flour), then gently roll it out away from you a few more times. Repeat, rotating every few rolls, to get a 12-inch (30cm) circle, about ¼-inch (6mm) thick. Tip: Work swiftly to complete the rollout before the dough becomes sticky.
- Transfer the dough to a tart pan by rolling it loosely over the rolling pin and then unrolling it over the tart pan. Ease dough into the pan corners by lifting the dough with one hand, while gently pressing it into the corners with the other hand, making sure to eliminate any gaps between the pan and the dough. (If the dough brakes or cracks, gently patch with excess dough.)
- Trim excess dough, either with a knife, or by rolling the rolling pin over the tart pan edge, or by pressing it off by hand.
- Chill (uncovered in the fridge) for at least 1 hour, or overnight, before baking.
For Pre-Baking without a Filling (Blind Bake)
- Set oven rack to the middle position and preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).
- Prick several holes in the dough with a fork, all the way through to the pan, to prevent air pockets. Place the tart pan on a baking sheet for easier handling, and bake:For a Partially Baked Crust: bake for 25-30 min, or until pale golden.For a Fully Baked Crust: bake for 35-40 min, or until fully golden.About 15 minutes into baking, check on the crust. If any air pocket has formed, prick with a fork to deflate.
- Remove from oven and let cool completely on a wire rack, about 30 minutes, before filling.
- Granulated Sugar vs Powdered Sugar: With powdered sugar, the dough is a little smoother to work with. It also makes for a slightly finer texture with a slightly more compact, yet delicate, crust.
Storing
- Baked Crust can be stored at room temperature overnight, or in the fridge for 3 or 4 days before filling.
- Baked or Unbaked Crust stores well in the freezer for up to two months, double wrapped to preserve quality and prevent freezer burn. (Tip: label with date.)
- For a frozen baked crust: allow to thaw for at least 15 minutes before filling.
- For a frozen unbaked crust, bake immediately after taking out of the freezer (helps minimize shrinking).
