Pie Crust Pate Brisee with Butter – The Pastry Killer
Posted by The Pie Guy
Makes one 10 to 9 inch pie, double crust, dough. Total time
This Pâte Brisée pie crust is all butter and good for sweet and savory dishes.
Use Pate Brisee for both sweet and savory pastries.
This pastry can be made in a food processor or by hand.
Pate Brisee is pronounced paht bree-zay.
French short crust pastry dough
The dough is a French short crust pastry dough made of a mixture of flour, a little sugar, salt, butter, and ice water or milk and yolks.
It has a high ratio of fat to flour. This gives the pastry its crumbly tender texture and buttery flavor.
Pie Crust Pate Brisee with Butter
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—Ingredients—
Pastry dough – double crust
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon fine salt
1 1/2 cup (3 sticks) cold unsalted butter
3 egg yolks
5 tablespoons of ice cold milk
Directions
1. Put the flour in your food processor along with the other dry ingredients.
2. Give it a quick pulse before adding the butter.
3. Add the butter that is cold and cubed.
4. Slightly pulse the food processor until the flour is lightly coated with the butter.
5. The butter should be still in chunks. These chunks of butter are the key in making the pastry really flaky.
6. Dump this mixture into a large bowl.
If you are doing this by hand
use pastry cutter
or two knives and cut it in.
Why not just use a large fork?
7. Combine and mix the wet ingredients, egg yolks and cold milk.
The yolks and milk
make this pastry
really tender.
8. Add the liquid directly to the dry ingredients.
9. Toss this until the large mass comes together into a big crumbly mess. Do not mix it until it becomes a ball of dough.
10. Take it all out and dump the mess on a flat clean surface.
11. We are going to fraisage the dough which is a French term to smear or to incorporate the flour and butter with the heel of your hand. This process converts all the chunks of butter into thin sheet layers. Those long thin sheets will make the crust full of wonderful flakes.
12. With the palm (heel) of your hand, smear (push) down the dough by starting at the top of the heap. Do it three to five times. Not too much or the dough will get tough.
13. Move the dough to a sheet of plastic and wrap tightly. This is the final bit of making the dough come together.
14. Flatten the dough into a large disk and refrigerate.
