What is Shortcrust Pastry?

Shortcrust pastry is a very common variety of pastry. It is used often in bweet and savoury dishes. You may come across it as the base pastry for a sweet tart or perhaps a quiche. It is also a very common choice of pastry for the base of a pie. At it’s core, it is a simple pastry consisting of flour, butter, salt and water. It requires very little working, to keep the butter and flour not fully incorporated, and does not rest very long. As a result, shortcrust is a relatively simple pastry to make!

The name shortcrust comes from the fact the flakiness of the finished pastry. Well made shortcust should be very flaky and crumbly. This is a result of the high fat content, which prevents or “shorts” strong gluten formation. The lack of working of the dough creates pockets of flour, which disrupt gluten formation and create the flakes. Check out this article for more info on different types of pastry!

Making the Pastry

It is not just the fat content of the dough that causes this, but the way it is incorporated. Shortcrust is started by first crumbling butter into flour. This is done either by hand or with a food processor and creates a crumb-like mix of small bits of butter coated in flour. The crumbles are what then give the pockets of butter to the final dough.

Water is then added to the dough in small amounts, just enough to allow the grains to combine. Some recipes call for the use of milk instead, but I find that water works best. Some recipes also use eggs to bind the dough, but this can ruin the flakiness and delicacy of the pastry later. You should make sure to use ice cold water when you do this. This is because it is very important to prevent the butter from melting too much when combining it. You want to ensure that those butter pockets remain, so ice cold water helps to keep the temperature of the dough from rising too high!

The final step in making the dough is to bring it together by hand. Start addinng the water 1 tbsp at a time, collect the crumbs in your hand and just press them together into a ball by hand. You should not knead the dough, so it does not become overworked. If the dough is not coming together, add another tbsp of the water and try again. As soon as the dough is able to form a ball, stop adding water and wrap the dough in cling film. It should then be chilled for 15-30 minutes to allow the butter to cool again before rolling.

It is important not to leave your dough in the fridge to chill for too long. If you do, the butter will become too solid again and your dough will lose it’s integrity when you roll it. This will cause it to crack and be difficult to work with! When you take it out of the fridge, press the surface with a finger to see if it cracks. All that is left is to roll it out on a clean, floured work surface!