This is perhaps my favourite pastry. It is very quick to make, and let’s say almost foolproof (!). It takes longer to assemble the equipment on the counter and get the ingredients from the cupboard than it takes to make this pastry.
I teach this recipe in a course called “flaky pastry”. All types of pastry should be somewhat flaky, or at least crumbly, but there is quite a range. At one end of the range are lard or shortening pie crusts, with lots of tiny flakes. At the other end is puff pastry, which has very large and distinct flakes. In the middle would be the French butter pie crust called pâte brisée. This galette pastry is like pâte brisée, but adds a step that takes it one step closer to a puff pastry.
When making pastry, remember three words, which are your key success factors: cold, fast, rest. When working with butter and flour pastries, you don’t want the butter getting soft and tightly combining with the flour. You will then end up with short-crust pastry, not what you want here. Working fast with cold butter prevents this from happening. Between steps in the making of the pastry, you also want to let it rest, so the flour properly hydrates. It does this all by itself in the refrigerator; nothing for you to do!
Equipment
You can make pastry by hand, or you can use machines. If doing by hand, the pastry blender is what you need (they say you can also use two knives, but whoever says that has obviously never tried it). If I am making one batch of pastry, and I want the fewest things to clean up, this is what I use:
The best machine for pastry is the food processor, which I use if I am making a larger batch:
And Julia Child uses a stand mixer in some of her recipes, though I wouldn’t recommend it for a small amount of pastry like in this recipe:
I also talk about a bench scraper here and there, You can buy them at kitchen gadget stores or even IKEA:
French butter pie crust (pâte brisée) has flour, butter, and water. This version adds some dairy to the dough to make the flakes a little softer. I always have yogurt in the fridge, so use that, but you can use sour cream or some milk with a squeeze of lemon juice instead. I find Greek-style yogurt to be too thick, so just regular is the best. Unflavoured yogurt is preferable, but once I was making it at a friend’s place, and only sweetened vanilla yogurt was available. That worked too, though I omitted the sugar.
This dough is very crumbly after you have mixed everything together, and in fact you may think that it is way too dry to roll out. Resist the temptation to add more water! I have given a range of how much water you can use, and that is because different flours absorb water differently. Start with 2 tablespoons and see how that works for the flour that you have on hand. If you had to work the dough too much to get it to come together, try 2 1/2 tablespoons the next time. Remember that the less water, the more delicate and flaky it will be.
Remember the cold keyword, which is important for the butter. You can take the butter out of the fridge and cut it into cubes at the last minute before you add it, or you can cut the butter up first and put it back in the fridge until you are ready to add it. I have seen some recipes that chill the flour, though I have never found that necessary.
Print Recipe
Print
Ingredients
1 1/4 cups (180 g) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup (113 g) cold butter
1/4 cup (61 g) yogurt
2 tablespoons cold water (see note about adjusting amount)
Directions
- Preparation
- Cut cold butter into 1-cm cubes and put back in fridge if not using immediately. Whisk together yogurt and cold water.
- Pastry blender method
- Weigh the flour in the bowl you will be using and add the salt and sugar. Whisk to distribute. Add the cold, cubed butter and cut with the pastry blender vigorously about 5 times. Add the yogurt and water and continue pressing down and blending everything together. Your goal is to have some pea-sized chunks of butter still in the flour, and the beginnings of dough that just starts to stick. Pinch some dough and it should stick together. If it really doesn’t stick together at all, add a tiny bit more water, but remember that drier is better at this point.
- Food processor method
- Place flour, salt, and sugar into the food processor bowl and whiz for a few seconds to distribute. Add the butter and pulse about five times, in one-second pulses. Pour the yogurt mixture over the flour and continue pulsing until the dough just starts to clump a bit.
- Continuation with both methods
- Dump the ragged, messy dough mixture onto a piece of parchment paper or plastic wrap on the counter and quickly press together into a rough square. If there are some bits of flour that didn’t get any moisture, press them into the centre of the square. Wrap up the square in plastic or parchment, pop into a ziplock-style bag, seal, and place in the fridge to let rest for at least an hour.
- After the dough has had its rest, prepare to do some folds to develop the layers. Dust your counter or a large wooden bread board with a generous amount of flour and get your bench scraper ready.
Place the square of loose pastry dough on the floured surface and dust the top with a small amount of flour. Press down (don’t roll yet) with a rolling pin to flatten, and then use a combination of pressing and rolling to coax it into a rectangle, using the bench scraper to keep the sides straight. You want to end up with a rectangle of about 5” by 15” ( about 12 cm x 36 cm). This act turns the combination of flour paste and butter chunks into rough, irregular layers, which starts the process of making the pastry flaky. You may have to keep dusting the top with flour to keep it from sticking to the rolling pin. Slide the bench scraper under one of the short sides of the rectangle and fold it to almost the centre of the rectangle. Do the same with the other side, leaving just a bit of a gap between them.
You will now have a line down the middle where your rectangle ends meet. Slide the pastry cutter under one of the sides and fold in half. This is called a double, or book fold:
You have now quadrupled the rough layers that you created by flattening and rolling the dough. Flour the counter and the top of the dough again and roll out into a rectangle. Fold this in half to double those layers and make a square. If your dough looks too crumbly to work with, you can roll it out into a rectangle and fold in half again.
You can use the dough immediately, but it will be easier to work with if you rewrap and put it back inside the ziplock bag and into the refrigerator to rest for at least another half an hour. You can even leave it for a a day, or freeze it to use later.