Here’s a quick, easy recipe from Around my French Table by Dorie Greenspan. You’ll want to have one like this in your list of recipes-for-special-occasions. It makes a slightly sweet tart dough, which is perfect for her Tourteau de chèvre from the same book. You’ll see that recipe tomorrow. Don’t worry, this one has to chill overnight anyway.
Tart Dough
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 6 Tbs cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp ice water
Instructions
- Measure the dry ingredients directly into a food processor.
- Pulse the dry ingredients a few times to mix thoroughly.
- Put the bits of butter all over the top of the dry ingredients.
- Pulse until you have something that looks like coarse meal.
- In another bowl, fork together the egg and ice water.
- Add a third of the egg mixture. Pulse. Add another third. Pulse. Add the remaining third. Pulse, pulse, pulse. If the dough is moist and clumps when pressed together, great. Otherwise, add a teaspoon of ice water, and pulse and check again.
- Turn out the dough, press into a ball, form into a disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate at least three hours or overnight.
Ingredient discussion:
Only thing we can say is that free range eggs are the best, but you already knew that.
Procedure in detail:
Measure the dry ingredients. Measure them directly into a food processor. You can make this with your hands, and you can find out how in Around my French Table, but the easiest is the food processor.
Whirr. Pulse the dry ingredients a few times to mix thoroughly.
Add chilled butter. Put the bits of butter all over the top of the dry ingredients.
Whirr. Pulse until you have something that looks like coarse meal. Don’t worry if you have a few large lumps. It won’t matter.
Mix egg and water. In another bowl, fork together the egg and ice water. In general, we’ve needed a bit more water than this recipe calls for, close to a tablespoon, but you can add more a bit later.
Whirr. Add a third of the egg mixture. Pulse. Add another third. Pulse. Add the remaining third. Pulse, pulse, pulse. If the dough is moist and clumps when pressed together, great. Otherwise, add a teaspoon of ice water, and pulse and check again. You might have to add 2 teaspoons of ice water total.
Turn out. Turn out the dough, press into a ball, form into a disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate at least three hours or overnight.
Like all of Dorie Greenspan’s recipes, this gets five stars.