Sablée pastry for tarts and tartlets.

Sablée pastry is a one of most populare basic recipes, crumbly and crispy is used for tarts and tartlets with fresh fruits, creams and chocolate.

 

Ingredients for a tart 22-24 cm's diametre

200 g plain flour

25 g almonds flour

100 g cold butter

2 g (a small pinch) of salt

75 g icing sugar

1 medium egg (40 g)


Sablé is the French word for "sandy". This classic crust, crumbly and crispy, is often used for tarts an tartlets.

 I'll show you step by step, how to make the perfect tart crust used in a few recipes you can find on my site.

 

In my recipes I use the rub in method  (french technique called sablage after the verb sabler , meaning "to make sandy"), which consists in mix the cold butter and dry ingrédients.

The 2 secrets of this method is: Cold and Quick…  The butter must be very cold and is very important to do not overwork - when all the ingredients are combined, it's ready

Picture 1

At slow-medium speed, mix the flour and diced cold butter until the mixture has a sandy texture (Picture 1).

Add the ground almonds (almond flour), salt and icing sugar and mix all the ingredients for a few seconds.

 

Add the eggs at last (Picture 2) and mix until until the mixture comes together as a ball of dough (Picture 3) and it has a softened consistancy.

Gather the pastry into a disc (Picture 4), put it in cling film and set in the fridge for 1 hour before using it.

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How to line a tart tin

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When you bring the dough out from the fridge to roll it, it should be soft enough to roll (ou can press your finger in the dough about 1/4" - 1/2" with no effort).

If is not the case rolling, is enough to hit slowly  the dough with a rolling pin (Picture 5).

Roll out the pastry to a tikness of 5-6 mm (Picture 6). 

Keep frequently turning the dough so it is not always rolled in the same direction, You can add a little more flour if necessary.

Roll the dough around the rolling pin (Picture 7) and transfer it to a buttered tart pan or pie plate (Picture 8).

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Lower the pastry into the tin (Picture 9) , use your fingertips to press it gently into the edges (Picture 10) and and up the wall of the tin in order to line the base and sides (Picture 11)

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Remouve the excess pastry with a knife (Picture 12). Then unstick the pastry from up of the edges with You nail (Picturee 13). Prick the surface of the pastry with a fork (Picture 14)

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If you've lined the tin correctly, you can forget about baking beans, but don't forget to to prick the base all over with a fork, as this will release any trapped air, which is what causes the centre to rise up.

Put the tart tin in the oven pre-heated at 180° (370 F) for 15 minutes.

Chef tips 

If before rolling the pastry you realise that the fat in the butter has not melted enough when kneading the dough,  you need to knead  again yout pastry together with base of palm a couple of times (Picture 15).

Gather it into a ball  (Picture 16), put it in cling film and set in the fridge for 30 minutes - 1 hour before using it.

Picture 15

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