Home desserts How to make elastic shortbread dough. Shortcrust pastry: cooking secrets and baking recipes. The most durable shortbread dough for pies with a "lattice"

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How to make elastic shortbread dough. Shortcrust pastry: cooking secrets and baking recipes. The most durable shortbread dough for pies with a "lattice"

What could be tastier than tender crispy pastries that seem to melt in your mouth? This is how products are obtained from shortcrust pastry prepared according to our recipes. To make the finished dough crispy, ordinary flour is replaced with starch, and powdered sugar is added to the mixture instead of sugar. If flour is used as the main ingredient, then it is recommended to give preference to a product with a low gluten content. So the finished baking will turn out soft, crumbly and very tasty. Still don't know how to do shortbread dough on your own at home? Then read our article.

On the basis of such a test, housewives prepare various desserts, pies, pizzas, as well as open and closed pies.

Note: flour, butter and sugar are taken in a ratio of 3: 2: 1. Thanks to this formula, the shortbread dough acquires the necessary crumbly texture, due to which the pastry turns out to be melting in the mouth.

You will need:

1 pack of margarine;
300 g flour;
150 g of sugar;
2 eggs.

Cooking:

To knead the dough, you must prepare in advance a convenient large bowl with a deep bottom.

To begin with, grind the chilled margarine with a grater, after which we combine it with sugar and eggs.
Next, we begin to slowly introduce flour into the resulting mixture until a steep mass of a homogeneous consistency is obtained. Ready dough cover with cling film or cellophane and leave in the freezer for 30 minutes.
We roll out the cooled mass into a cake with a thickness of no more than 1 cm. Using special forms, we cut out any figures we like from the dough.
The shaped cookies are placed in baking molds and cooked in the oven at 200 ° C. After 15 minutes, we get the finished dessert.

Basic cookie recipe

Ingredients:

flour - 1 tbsp.;
oil - ½ pack;
crushed sugar - ½ tbsp.;
sunflower oil - 3 tbsp. l.;
starch - 30 g;
salt and vanillin - a pinch.

Cooking steps:

Grind butter with powdered sugar, add vegetable oil to the mixture.

Note: so that the oil does not affect the taste of the finished baking, give preference to a refined, odorless product.

The resulting mass is brought with a mixer to a homogeneous texture. Add starch, vanilla and beat the ingredients again. The result should be a cool plastic mass.
Slowly add 1/3 of the flour to the mixture and begin to knead the dough. During cooking, add the rest of the flour. The resulting mass should not stick to the palms.
Cover the cookie dough with cellophane and leave in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Then we take out the chilled dough, form a small roller out of it and cut the mass into pieces.
Shortbread cookies are baked at a temperature of 160 ° C for half an hour.

Cooking for a pie

Cooking shortcrust pastry for a pie will take a minimum of time. At the same time, the incredible aroma of freshly prepared pastries will make the household look forward to snatching at least a small piece of delicacy.

Note: the products to be used in the recipe must be pre-cooled. Butter, water and margarine - all these ingredients are kneaded exclusively cold.

You will need:

350 g flour;
1 pack of butter;
100 g of powdered sugar;
2 chicken yolks;
a pinch of salt.

Cooking:

Mix in a suitable bowl butter with sugar and salt. For whipping, you can use a mixer or mix the ingredients manually using a regular whisk.
Add chicken yolks to the resulting mass, beat the ingredients again.
Pour the sifted flour onto the surface of the table in a slide, and make a small indentation in the center. Pour the egg mixture into the hole and knead the plastic mass.

Important! Do not knead the sand mass for too long, otherwise the finished baking will be hard and less crumbly.

Form a ball from the dough, place it in cellophane and let it cool for 40-50 minutes. After a while, roll out the chilled mass and use the dough to make various pies.

Soft and crumbly dough with yeast

Ingredients:

margarine - 1 pack;
flour - 400 g;
1 tsp yeast;
salt - on the tip of a knife;
30 g of granulated sugar;
60 ml of water.

Cooking:

Dissolve yeast in warm water, add 1 tbsp. l. Sahara. Stir the ingredients and leave the mixture for 10 minutes.
Combine the butter with the sifted flour, add salt and the remaining sugar.
Next, start slowly pouring in the previously dissolved yeast, then knead the plastic mass. Use as much flour as you need to get a soft, non-sticky texture.
Use the finished dough without pre-cooling. On its basis, you can cook pies, rolls or cookies.
The processed dough should rise for 40-60 minutes before being sent to the oven. Next, the formed products are smeared with yolk and baked until a characteristic golden crust appears.

Step by step cooking without eggs

If suddenly there was no couple in the kitchen chicken eggs, we suggest making a lazy tart dough, which is not based on egg yolk and white.

All you need is:

flour - 1 tbsp.;
oil - 1 pack;
water - 5 tbsp. l.;
sugar - 30 g;
salt on the tip of a knife.

Let's start cooking:

Dissolve salt and sugar in water.
Next, combine the sifted flour with butter and pour the ingredients with the previously prepared liquid. Knead the dough thoroughly on the work surface of the table.
When the mass stops sticking to your palms, roll it into a small layer at least 1 cm thick. Using special molds, you can cut out small figures for future cookies or cook any other sweet desserts based on dough.
Products are baked for 40-50 minutes at a temperature of 190 ° C.

Test recipe for one, two, three

Ingredients:

½ st. flour;
1 pack of margarine;
a pinch of salt;
1 yolk;
50 ml of water.

Cooking:

Rub the butter with flour, put a pinch of salt.
Add water and chicken yolk to the resulting mixture, then mix the ingredients until a homogeneous texture. Knead a cool plastic mass.
Next, form ready dough bun, cover it with cellophane and leave in the refrigerator for half an hour.
Bake various tartlets, sweet pies or baskets from the chilled mass.

Shortcrust pastry for chicken

Dough for kurnik can be stored frozen for a fairly long period of time. Therefore, we recommend that you prepare a large amount of sand base at a time, so that later you can quickly and without much hassle bake fragrant flour products for the whole family.

Required products:

flour - 2 tbsp.;
salt - ½ tsp;
a pinch of soda;
egg - 1 pc.;
margarine - 1 pack;
sugar - 2 tbsp. l.;
sour cream - 1 tbsp.

Cooking:

We combine the fat with sugar and salt, beat the ingredients until the crystals are completely dissolved.
Then add the egg, sour cream and beat the mixture again.
Next, pour the flour in small portions, without stopping stirring the mass.
We add slaked soda and knead a delicate plastic dough, which we put in the freezer for half an hour.
After the specified time, cut the chilled mass into two parts. We roll one half into a round layer, after which we spread the prepared filling for the chicken coop on the dough.
At the final stage, roll out the rest of the base and cover it with the top layer of the filling. The dough for the kurnik is baked in an oven preheated to 180 ° C for 40-50 minutes.

Important: during the preparation process, use special nozzles designed for kneading shortcrust pastry.

Compound:

flour - 2 tbsp.;
butter - 50 g;
warm water - ½ tbsp.;
egg - 1 pc.;
a pinch of salt.

Cooking:

In the bowl of the appliance, mix flour, butter and egg until smooth.
In a separate bowl, dissolve the salt in a warm liquid, after which the salt solution is poured into the bowl with the dough. The resulting mass is kneaded using a low speed food processor.
The dough wrapped in cellophane is cooled for 25-30 minutes.
Next, a thin layer 2 mm thick is rolled out on the surface of the table with a rolling pin.
At the end, small circles are cut out of the finished dough, which can be stuffed with any fruit for further baking or frozen until next preparation dishes.

With shortcrust pastry - as with any other - you can try different options, change its few ingredients this way and that, add this and that ... This is if you have been with shortcrust pastry for a long time. And if not, then it is better to start with a simple principle. 3: 2: 1.

This is the ratio in the dough of flour, butter and sugar. That is, for 3 parts of flour you need 2 parts of butter and one part of sugar. And, of course, a pinch of salt.

What kind of butter to use - butter, cream-vegetable high-fat spreads or regular margarine - is a matter of taste. It is better to try both - and choose for yourself.
The question of the need for soda is debatable. Someone bakes without it, someone adds it. Yes, the recipes are different. In any case, if we put soda on the tip of a knife, it’s not worth extinguishing with something sour. Soda is added to mashed sugar with butter and eggs before adding flour.
We make dough. Rub the butter with sugar, add the egg, mix until smooth, add flour and knead the dough - better by hand. Transfer it to a cutting board and knead quickly with both hands.
The dough should be soft and plastic. We roll it into a ball, wrap it in cling film or a cloth napkin. We put it in the refrigerator for half an hour - this will preserve the elasticity of the shortcrust pastry, make it easier to roll it out with a rolling pin and provide a beautiful appearance baking: it will not crack in the oven. The entire preparation of shortbread dough usually takes 10 minutes.
There is a more complicated way of kneading. The flour is sifted onto a cutting board, sugar and salt are poured out, and the chilled butter cut into pieces is chopped with flour with 1-2 knives until homogeneous crumbs are obtained. Then the eggs are added and the dough is kneaded by hand. This is where speed is especially important.
After the refrigerator, the dough needs to lie down a little on the table, slightly “warm up”. Roll out, lightly floured, on a flat surface. If you add a lot of flour, then it will burn during baking.
Pies, cakes, pastries, cookies are baked from shortcrust pastry. Can layer soft dough roll out and use curly notches, or you can simply fashion any figures, letters, etc. hands. Children love to sculpt from dough very much - you should not deprive them of this pleasure.
We bake on dry baking sheets - shortbread dough does not require lubrication. We heat the oven - depending on the products - from 180 to 220 degrees, 10-15 minutes are enough for baking. The color of finished products should be golden. When cool, they are easy to remove from the pan.
The thickness of cookies, shortcrust pastry figures should be 4-6 mm, for pies, cakes and pastries - 8-10. Thicker layers bake worse. It should be noted that fashioned small figures, even thicker ones, are baked normally.
The dough can be flavored with vanilla, cinnamon, add cocoa, nuts, cheese ... all the options are not listed. As well as options for kneading dough for baking with desired properties, of which there are thousands on the Internet.

According to our basic recipe shortcrust pastry, you can make it at any time and bake whatever your heart desires. A few tips. When creating shortcrust pastry, time is an important factor. The longer we knead the dough, the more it loses plasticity and lightness, and the more rigid the baking will turn out.
. Instead of sugar, it is more convenient to use powdered sugar - it is easier and faster to grind it with butter and get a homogeneous mass. In addition, with powder, the dough is more crumbly. Powder is required in the dough a little more than granulated sugar.
. Love very crumbly dough - replace some of the egg whites with yolks.
. If we bake large layers of dough - it is better to do this on large metal sheets without sides - it will be easier to remove the layer.
. If the dough crumbles a lot when rolling out, it means that products made from it have every chance of being tough. To "save" the shortbread dough, it must be well cooled, then kneaded. If plasticity is not restored, add the egg yolk and mix again.
. It is often more convenient to roll out the dough on baking paper.
. If part of a large layer is baked, while others are not, carefully cover the baked places with paper (top and bottom, if possible) and continue baking until cooked.
. If it is supposed to cut plastics for multi-layer cakes or cakes from the sand layer after baking, it is more practical to make shallow cuts or punctures with a knife before baking.
. Shortbread dough can be stored in the refrigerator for up to three days, you can even freeze it.

Shortcrust pastry, like any other pastry dough, has its own secrets. What is the secret of the incomparable shortcrust pastry? Let's find out what affects the friability of the dough:

1. Use of flour with a low level of gluten (28-34%).

2. Use of chemical baking powder for dough.

3. Partial or complete replacement of eggs with yolks.

4. Cooling the dough.

The main ingredient that ensures the plasticity of the dough is oil. Depending on the type of product (pie with sweet or savory filling, cake base, biscuits, etc.) vegetable fat or oil, as well as butter and margarine, can be added to shortbread dough. For sweet pastries confectioners, as a rule, take butter. If it is unsalted, then you just need to add a small amount of salt.

The ratio of ingredients

Very often, housewives try to move away from the recipe or change the ratio of ingredients, which can negatively affect the quality of baking. So, with an insufficient amount of fat, the dough will turn out to be denser and tougher, and partial replacement of eggs with liquid will worsen the taste of the finished product and make it less crumbly.

If you use flour with a high gluten content or increase the amount of flour in relation to other ingredients, then this will cause the dough to turn out to be too hard and dense. Do not add water - this will negatively affect the plasticity of the dough.

Temperature regime

Another of the main mistakes that lead to the fact that the dough turns out to be tough and does not have the necessary friability is non-compliance with the temperature regime. A certain temperature when working with the dough requires the oil contained in it. It should not completely melt during the kneading or molding process. As a rule, shortbread dough is kneaded quickly enough, after which it is put in the refrigerator so that the oil “grabs” again. Forming products can take place in several stages, depending on the type of baking.

If the dough is heated by hand during the process, the molding is stopped and the dough is put back into the refrigerator. The greatest art is to form products in just a couple of minutes, while the dough remains matte.

The optimal temperature regime for working with shortcrust pastry is 16-20 ° C. At lower temperatures, it loses its plasticity and becomes very hard, which means that it is more difficult to form products. At higher temperatures, the dough becomes too soft and starts to crumble when rolled out.

The fact is that with strong heating, the oil separates from other ingredients and appears on the surface of the dough - it begins to shine. Therefore, the dough should be matte, chilled, for this they usually moisten their hands in cold water, put the board for cutting the dough and the rolling pin in the refrigerator. The dough is also recommended to knead from cold ingredients.

To avoid heating, when kneading it is also very often used food processor- the oil does not have time to heat up, while the dough is quite homogeneous. Many housewives, avoiding oil contact with their hands, chop the ingredients into crumbs with one or two knives. Such a dough is called chopped, after which it is quickly kneaded, flour is added and left to rest.

Methods for preparing shortcrust pastry

According to the confectionery technology, the process of preparing a shortbread semi-finished product consists of the following stages: whipping the mass, determining its readiness, kneading the dough, molding and baking.

With the machine method of preparing the dough, the butter is rubbed with sugar to a creamy consistency. The mass should increase in volume by 1.5-2 times, and the sugar should completely dissolve. Then eggs, salt, milk and liquid additives to the dough (vanilla or rum essence, etc.) are gradually added to it in small portions.

Lastly, flour, dry additives to the dough and chemical baking powder (if necessary) are added to the mass, and kneading is carried out for 2-3 minutes. Increasing the kneading time can lead to both melting of the butter and the formation of a "tight" dough. The longer the kneading time, the more the gluten swells and the faster the shortbread dough loses its friability. Ideally, it should turn out plastic and homogeneous, without lumps.

The manual method of preparing shortcrust pastry provides for the following procedure. Sprinkle flour on a cutting board or table and make a well in it. Butter, pounded with sugar, is placed in the recess and eggs and liquid are added (with salt and additives to the dough dissolved in them), after which the dough is kneaded until smooth, moving from the center to the edges. If the butter melts during the kneading process, the dough should be removed for a while in the refrigerator, and moisten your hands with cold water, but it is better to cool the ingredients before kneading.

The finished dough is also cooled for 20-60 minutes before cutting, depending on the amount of dough.

In some cases, flour can be replaced with chopped nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, walnut), pre-mixed with flour. In this case, the nuts should take up no more than half of the flour, then the dough will have a slightly different texture. Also, to obtain a more crumbly dough, flour can be replaced by a third with starch. To improve the taste, cardamom, cinnamon, lemon or lemon can be added to the dough. orange peel, almond crumb.

Forming and baking products

Shortbread dough is baked in a whole layer or pre-shaped with special cutters or molds. As mentioned earlier, shaping the dough should take as little time as possible. For portioned products, the dough is divided into small portions and taken out of the refrigerator gradually. For baking - a whole layer.

The chilled dough is divided into pieces in the form of rectangular bricks in proportion to the number of layers. Each brick is placed on a floured table and lightly sprinkled with flour on top. Next, a rolling pin is placed in the middle of the brick, and the dough is rolled out first across and then along. At the same time, it is periodically wrapped on a rolling pin and cut from above and below. The trimmings obtained in this way are used when cutting the next portion of the dough, but it is not recommended to make many trimmings: the more they are attached to subsequent portions of the dough, the worse their quality will be.

The dough is always rolled out on a smooth flat surface. If the surface is bumpy, this contributes to the formation of patches of dough with different thicknesses, which in the future can lead to either burning or uneven baking of the dough. Each type of product has its own dough thickness from 3 to 8 mm. In large productions, special machines for rolling dough are used to reduce the cutting time. The finished layer of dough is placed on a baking sheet, pierced in several places (so that there is no swelling from gases when using chemical baking powder) and sent to the oven. It is not necessary to additionally grease the baking sheet with oil, since the dough already contains enough oil.

For baking shortcrust pastry piece by piece for cakes or cookies, the layer is rolled out with a thickness of 6-7 mm and blanks are formed using metal recesses, which are placed on a baking sheet or iron sheet for subsequent baking. Shortbread dough is baked at a temperature of 215-240 ° C, depending on the thickness of the dough layer. Thick layers are baked at 215 °C, thin ones at 240 °C. Baking can last from 10 to 15 minutes, again depending on the thickness of the dough. The readiness of the dough is determined by the light brown shade and friability of the product. If the product has begun to burn, but has not yet baked through, you need to cover it with parchment paper. Piece products are baked at 260-270 ° C for 12-15 minutes.

I love and often cook shortbread and shortbread pies. Traditionally, margarine or butter is used for their preparation. The latter I respect and, moreover, love. But if you often cook on it, it will be greasy (in every sense of the word). A lot has already been said about margarine and spreads, but I consider it worth recalling that the transgenic fats they contain lead to an increase in the level of "bad" cholesterol in the blood, disrupt the normal functioning of cell membranes, contribute to the development of vascular diseases, etc. Therefore, I completely excluded these "products" from my kitchen. And now I'm making shortcrust pastry on vegetable oil. Completely safe, tasty and healthy. And what is important, even cheaper and faster than with margarine! And a couple of words about margarine. Margarine drinkers are more likely to develop angina, myocardial infarction, arrhythmias, and heart failure. It was invented in France to feed the army and the poor - cheap product for sandwiches and frying. All this happened at the end of the century before last, people had different ideas about food and life. I want to warn you that products made from this dough are A LOT harder than those made from margarine or butter, but is it worth ruining your blood vessels for the sake of a small difference ???

Make good shortcrust pastry at home, not everyone succeeds the first time, so in our article we will try to tell you in more detail how to make soft, tasty and beautiful shortbread dough on your own.

Many hostesses know that dishes made from shortcrust pastry are very airy and literally melt in your mouth. This type of dough differs from the usual one in that it contains a lot of fat. Of course, shortcrust pastry dishes are probably not suitable for diet breakfasts, but for those who are not used to counting calories, such yummy will be just right!

If the dough is well kneaded, then it will be possible not to add edible salt, which will have the best effect on palatability baking.

Another secret of high-quality shortcrust pastry is not to let it heat up.

During the kneading process, try to open the windows and ventilate the room well, make sure the table or board is cool enough before kneading the dough on it. And one more thing: try to minimize the time during which you will knead your shortbread dough, as this will limit its heating.

The structure of the finished dough should be smooth, matte and in no case shiny. If, nevertheless, it so happened that the dough shines a little, then send it for a while to the refrigerator or to any other cool place. When it cools a little, it will begin to knead better and stop sticking to your hands.

Pay special attention to rolling out the dough, as the thicker the layer, the worse it will bake. Carefully roll out the dough until its thickness is no more than 8 millimeters. Otherwise, do not complain that your dish is hopelessly spoiled.

When baking products from shortbread dough, you can not lubricate the baking dish with oil, since a sick amount of it is already contained in the dough itself. The oven must be preheated before baking, and the dough itself must be pricked several times with a fork before being sent to the oven.

If you are going to make shortbread dough much earlier than you will bake it, then we advise you to send it to the freezer until the very moment of baking. Shortbread dough can be stored in the freezer for about three months.

Before preparing the dough, sift the flour well and mix it thoroughly with chilled butter or margarine so that something resembling a crumb comes out. In this case, the dough will turn out crumbly and airy.

Some hostesses recommend kneading the shortbread dough only with your hands, and not using special electrical appliances. This way you can control the temperature of the dough and refrigerate it the moment it starts to heat up. And, besides, any dish prepared with your own hands, and not with the help of a machine, turns out to be much tastier and more beautiful.

And now let's take a closer look at the most popular recipes with which you can make delicious shortcrust pastry at home.

Classic recipe

In order to make the perfect shortcrust pastry on your own, classic recipe, you will need the following set of products:

flour: 3 tbsp.;

butter: 300 g;

powdered sugar: 1 tbsp.;

chicken eggs: 2 pcs.;

soda: ¼ tsp;

First, carefully sift the flour, then pour all the other ingredients on top. Remember that the oil must be chilled. It should be added last, cut into small pieces.

Now we knead the dough very, very quickly, achieving its uniformity, after which we send it to the refrigerator for an hour, after covering it with cling film.

Before you make something from the finished shortcrust pastry, it must be removed from the refrigerator, kneaded and rolled out well. The thinner the dough comes out, the better. Bake such a dough at a temperature of at least 200 degrees.

Soft shortbread dough

Shortcrust pastry prepared according to this recipe is incredibly soft and airy, and after cooking it literally melts in your mouth. To make shortbread dough soft, we need the following set of products:

flour: 3 tbsp.;

chilled butter: 450 g;

chicken eggs: 3 pcs.;

granulated sugar: 2/3 tbsp.;

soda: ¼ tsp;

lemon juice: 1 tsp;

Eggs and sugar are thoroughly mixed with butter, then we mix flour with salt and soda, which must first be quenched in advance prepared lemon juice. Now we mix all the ingredients as quickly as possible, knead the dough and send it to the refrigerator for one hour.

Such a dough is much softer than the classic shortbread dough, so in order to cook it, such a dough should be spread on a baking dish.

Dough with sour cream

Shortcrust pastry with the addition of sour cream turns out to be very lush and has a very pleasant aftertaste, which gives a dairy product. To make the dough according to this recipe, you should stock up on the following ingredients:

flour: 3 tbsp.;

chilled butter: 250 g;

sour cream: 1 tbsp.;

granulated sugar: 2 tbsp. l.;

lemon juice: 1 tsp;

salt: 0.5 tsp;

Grind the chilled butter with a grater, then mix it with sour cream. In the same container, sift the flour, add the rest of the ingredients and start kneading the dough. You need to do this as quickly as possible so that it does not have time to heat up.

When the shortbread dough is ready, send it to the refrigerator for at least two hours, after which you can cook delicious pastries from it.

Using the recommendations from our article, you can always quickly make delicious and proper shortcrust pastry at home. From such a test, very delicious bagels, cookies and pies that your family and friends will surely like. See the video below for more information.