Sunday, March 3, 2013

Baking Bouchon - Recipe 10: Pâte Sucreé

I didn't actually get to bake this yet, but I feel like this recipe deserves its own post since it's such an important component of a bunch of upcoming recipes.  Pâte Sucreé is a basic sweet dough that is the crust for many of the tarts in the cookbook.  The other crust he uses is Pâte Briseé which is more like a traditional pie dough.  The first tart I get to make is a Chocolate, Praline and Cocoa Nib Tart, but before I get started on that, I must make the crust.


Interestingly, this recipe calls for powdered sugar and a combination of regular flour and almond flour.  What I've typically seen is granulated sugar and regular flour - similar to making a sugar cookie.  Thomas says the powdered sugar blends better with the butter and the almond flour adds more flavor.  I'll buy that.

The dough comes together pretty easily.  You cream the butter with most of the sugar, add your vanilla beans, then sift in the dry ingredients.
You know you have a serious baking addiction when you think one of the most beautiful things in the world is a batter specked with vanilla beans....  Isn't she pretty?


After the dough comes together, you wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it overnight.  But before you do that, you break off a little piece, put it on a baking sheet, bake it and eat it.  It tastes like a sugar cookie.  Not the best sugar cookie you've ever had, but one that's not quite sweet enough because you're going to put a bunch of other stuff on it... like chocolate and pralines.


Alternatively, you can stick the dough in the freezer for a few days because you have to order ingredients from the Internet to make your tart.

Juli

No comments:

Post a Comment