Shortcrust Pastry Dough

The best way to make shortcrust pastry is in a food processor. You can make it by hand but the warmth of your hands will make the butter to melt too quickly and make the pastry a bit greasy. Add 250 grams of plain flour in a food processor and add cold butter that is half the weight of the flour.

Make sure your butter is cold from the fridge, pulse everything up and what you are looking for is really fine crumbs like breadcrumbs or ground almond, at this point, you can add sugar if you are making a sweet pastry or just add a pinch of salt then pulse it for a minute. At this point, you will add a liquid to bring the mixture together, use water, milk or egg yolks.

Start with a tablespoon of milk and add another if it has not come together, don’t add too much liquid otherwise the pastry will be too chewy. Once it has started to come together and you can push it together by your hands, pour the mixture to your work surface and start working on it just to bring it together with the cover the dough with a fling and chill it for about 30 minutes of overnight and it will be ready to rill out and be used in any recipe.