Here's your NEW favorite Pie Dough, Buttery Shortcrust Pastry! Don't let the word pastry scare you either, this pie dough recipe is EASY.

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Here’s your NEW favorite Pie Dough, Buttery Shortcrust Pastry! Don’t let the word pastry scare you either, this pie dough recipe is EASY.

Crispy, buttery, shortcrust pastry is the perfect pie dough recipe for any pie, or quiche you’re going to make.

I can’t WAIT to use it with my No Corn Syrup Pecan Pie, recipe. I’ll be sure to share it HERE when I’ve made that recipe!

Have you watched the GBBO 80s week on Netflix yet? Our bake for 80s Week over on the Great British Baking Show Bake-Along is a Quiche. It was the most accessible bake for our group and after last week’s steamed buns I think we all needed that!

The Bakes for 80s Week:

Signature Bake: 8 Mini Quiche with Shortcrust Pastry
Technical Bake: Finger Doughnuts with Cream Filling and Raspberry Jam
Showstopper Bake: Ice Cream Cake

My Fave Pie Dough Recipe

YES, I have had a favorite pie dough recipe for ages. But then I saw this shortcrust pastry as the crust for a Quiche on the GBBO. And honestly, I was curious. What IS Shortcrust?

So I went digging. On wikipedia I found a breakdown of crusts:

Pâte brisée=shortcrust with butter, flour, salt, and minimal water
Pâte à foncer=shortcrust WITH egg
Pâte sucrée=sweet shortcrust with egg and sugar
Pâte sablée=same as sucrée except the sugar and butter are creamed together, this dough is used for crispy cookie bases

See how they build on each other? I went deep down the hole of trying to figure out the difference between my (apparently) “American” Easy Pie Crust Recipe that I KNOW AND LOVE and a Shortcrust Pastry.

Shortcrust Pastry blind baked and ready for baking.

And the BIG difference seems to be the amount of FAT in a Shortcrust Pastry compared to my Pie Dough Recipe. Traditional shortcrust is made with half the amount of butter by weight to flour. So 100 grams of flour would require 50 grams of butter. My pie dough recipe is a little higher than that equation with only about 40% butter to flour.

How I converted my Pie Dough Recipe to a Shortcrust Pastry

So that set me off on a journey to make the crispiest shortcrust I could make. I decided to make my normal recipe using 2 1/2 cups of flour because I KNOW that amount of flour makes 2 crusts. I used the King Arthur Ingredient weight chart

Each loosened cup of flour is 120 grams
My recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups OR 300 grams of flour
I need 150 grams of butter AND 300 grams of flour to make a traditional shortcrust
150 grams of butter is 2/3 of a cup
So my logical conclusion is that I would need 2 1/2 cups (300 grams) of flour and 2/3 cup (150 grams) of butter

To Use this Shortcrust Pastry as Pie Dough

You can blind bake this if you’re making a pie that calls for blind baking. OR if your single-crust pie is going to bake for around 45-60 minutes at between 375˚and 400˚ then there is no need to blind bake. And if you’re using this for a double-crust pie proceed as usual and bake until golden brown.

How to make the BEST PIE CRUST

Keep everything COLD
Start with COLD butter
touch it as little as possible, that’s why using a food processor is smart, the less time your hot hands touch it the better
don’t over flour your counter, that can make your dough tough
after making the dough chill it until ready to use
to keep it from shrinking chill it again after you’ve rolled it out and fitted it in your pan
always put it in a HOT preheated oven, putting it in a cold oven and warming it up that way will melt your dough before it bakes

If you LOVE the GBBO…

Shortcrust Pastry

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Here's your NEW favorite Pie Dough, Buttery Shortcrust Pastry! Don't let the word pastry scare you either, this pie dough recipe is EASY.

Course: Recipe

Prep Time: 5

Cook Time: 25

Additional Time: 1

Total Time: 1 30

Servings: crusts/16 servings

Calories: 1111kcal

Author: Laura

Print Recipe

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups or 300 grams of flour
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup or 150 grams cold butter
ice cold water

Instructions

put the flour and salt in the bowl of a food processor
cover and pulse to combine
cut the butter in small piece and toss it in the processor
cover and pulse, you want it to look like bread crumbs but you don’t want it to run continuously, just pulse, pulse, pulse
when it looks like bread crumbs
add cold water 1 Tablespoon at a time and pulse between additions of water
when the dough JUST starts to hold together it’s done
take it out of the processor and put it on the counter, knead it quickly to bring it together to form a dough
wrap in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge to chill
when you’re ready to use it divide it in half, roll out each half of the dough and line a pie pan or tart pan with it, press into the tart pan really well so the crust fits the tart pan, trim the excess
at this point you can freeze your tart dough in the pan for 30 minutes as long as its a metal tart pan–glass will break going from the freezer to a hot oven
pre-heat your oven to 390˚ then blind bake or fill and bake as needed
if you’re making a one-crust pie or a tart and you’re going to blind bake it put parchment in the center of the lined pan, add beans or baking beans and bake for 20 minutes then remove the beans and bake another 5, then fill and bake
For most one-crust pies just filling and baking works if you plan to bake your pie between 375˚-400˚ for around 45 minutes to an hour

Notes

if you are making a cream pie that needs no more baking go ahead and bake your crust until another 10-15 minutes after blind baking
you can also poke the crust all over with a fork before baking to ensure you don’t get bubbles, I’ve never had bubbles happen during blind baking so I don’t call for it