Name: Shortcrust Pastry
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 30 min
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 4 cups all purpose (AP) flour (500 g - 17.6 oz); 1 1/3 cup unsalted butter (300 g - 10.6 oz); 1 1/2 cup icing sugar (200 g - 7 oz); 4 yolks (80 g - 2.8 oz); 1 teaspoon vanilla extract; 1 pinch salt; lemon zest (of 1 lemon)

Shortcrust Pastry, perfect for sweets like tarts, cookies, tartlets and other small pastry products. It’s buttery and flaky, but it’s tender enough to cut through with little effort.

Shortcrust pastry is a dough, widely used in pastry making, suitable for any type of filling, easy to work with, both by hand and with a mixer, with a delicate flavour. Because of its buttery consistency, it must be worked quickly and with cold hands.

Perfect for any occasion, you can fill it with jams, panna cotta and all kind of creams. This is my go-to pie crust. I generally use icing sugar instead of granulated sugar and this makes it more crumbly than a classic pastry.

Now let’s see together how to make the Shortcrust Pastry recipe, so let’s get started.

Tasty recipes to try:

DifficultyEasy
CostCheap
Preparation time30 Minutes
Rest time1 Hour
Cooking time30 Minutes
Serving4 – 6
Cooking methodOven
CuisineItalian

Ingredients

4 cups all purpose (AP) flour (500 g – 17.6 oz)

1¹/₃ cup unsalted butter (300 g – 10.6 oz)

1¹/₂ cup icing sugar (200 g – 7 oz)

4 yolks (80 g – 2.8 oz)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 pinch salt

lemon zest (of 1 lemon)

Tools

You’ll need:

1 Planetary Mixer

Steps

First, take the butter out of the fridge and cut into approximately 1 cm cubes.

Process flour and cold butter in a planetary mixer for a few minutes just long enough to obtain a sandy mixture.

Now add the icing sugar (or granulated sugar), a pinch of salt, vanilla and the grated lemon zest, and finally the egg yolks. Mix everything.

Wrap with plastic wrap and refridgerate for at least 1/2 hour: this step is essential because resting allows time for the gluten in the dough to relax and helps to stop shrinkage when cooking.

Tip: if you don’t want to use the dough right away, you can refrigerate it for up to 4 days, or freeze it for up to a month and then thaw overnight in the fridge.

Here it is. Shortcrust Pastry is ready. Before working it, lightly flour your work surface and rolling pin. You can also roll it out between two sheets of greaseproof paper. Enjoy!

Storage

You can store the shortcrust pastry in the refrigerator for 1 day (or overnight), wrapped in cling film. You can also freeze it and keep it in the freezer even for 2 months. To defrost, simply place it in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour and then work it quickly on a work surface.

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