Pâte brisée

Notes

Refrigerating the dough in step 6 helps to prevent it from shrinking and pulling away from the pan when baked. If you don’t care about that, this step is optional.

After molding the dough in step 9, you can hold this in the fridge overnight. Cover with plastic wrap after 1 hour.

Important If you are attempting this in warm weather (summertime in Australia, for instance), you’ll need to take extra precautions. Really. When rolling out the dough, it is easy for it to warm up from the heat of the bench and the ambient air temperature. This will make the dough very soft and extremely difficult to work with. There are a couple of things you can do to prevent this. One of the best is to use a marble pastry board; get one that will fit in your fridge or freezer. Put this in the freezer at the same time as the dough goes in the fridge. You can also use a marble rolling pin, also placed in the freezer. Regardless of the type of rolling pin you use, put it in the freezer. Don’t have a marble pastry board and don’t want to buy one? Try a cookie sheet or similar. It will have a much lesser thermal mass and so it will equilibrate with room temperature quicker than marble, but if you work quickly it will suffice. We use an All-Clad cookie sheet from the freezer and placed on a damp kitchen towel from the fridge.