Shortbread or pâte sablée?
Friday, April 2, 2010 at 10:43PM Scotland versus France in a biscuit bake-off
Shortbread
I've been on a patisserie bender recently. It started with David Lebowitz's Facebook link to Foodbeam, Fanny Zanotti's stunning and inspiring patisserie blog. A young French pastry chef who has trained with patisserie legends Pierre Hermé and Pascal Lac, Fanny's blog sparkles with enthusiasm for all things pastry.
Having fallen slightly out of love with my own blog - was beginning to feel like 'work' when I've got more than enough of that with the day job - Fanny reminded me that blogging is supposed to be FUN! Captivated by her beautiful creations, equally beautiful images, quirky and effervescent writing, I took a good nosey around her pages. Which led me to ph10, Pierre Hermé's advanced-level pastry book featuring 10 year's of his professional creations. Hopping over to Amazon, my spirits momentarily sank on discovering that it isn't available in English, but very quickly rose again when I spotted the following in Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought:
Several days later, the wonderful French Culinary Institute (FCI) book in hand, I was intrigued to read that pâte sablée can be used to make cookies as well as tart shells. Literally 'sandy pastry', pâte sablée is the sweet and super crumbly, melt in the mouth pastry that you encounter at the base of the very best tarts. You know the kind that disintegrates into a thousand buttery crumbles the moment you close your lips around it?
Noticing that the ingredients and ratios were very similar, though not the same, to those for shortbread, I whipped out my Gran's cookery notebook - a treasured inheritance - for her shortbread recipe and embarked on a shortbread/pâte sablée trial. (There's a reason for my inquisitiveness, but I'm not quite ready to share it with you.)
Having spent a couple of days in a puff cloud of icing sugar, busily creaming, mixing, rolling, cutting, baking and photographing, I presented the products to friends and colleagues for their assessment. Blinded of course - I am a scientist by profession remember!
The results: Scotland 8, France 3. A hands down win for the wee country. Admittedly, I ended up baking the sablée twice to achieve a crisp, biscuity texture; although the golden edges denoted readiness after the first bake, the crumb was still soft when I tried one after they'd cooled. A second bake imbued crunch but changed the flavour. The mild, buttery sweetness was replaced by a much stronger, nutty toastiness, not unpleasant but overdone to most, though not all, people's taste.
Pâte sablée
My early conclusion, pending further experimentation? It all depends on whether you want to make biscuits or tarts. In the oldest sea-faring tradition, biscuits are meant to be hard. For ones that also melt in your mouth and have a delicate sweet flavour, I would advise the shortbread. On the other hand, the ability to cut a tart without hacking it into pieces is a distinct advantage. In which case, sablée's slightly softer crumb wins out.
Ingredients
My Gran's shortbread:
4oz/112g plain flour, sifted
2oz/56g cornflour, sifted
4oz/112g unsalted butter, at room temperature
2oz/56g icing sugar, sifted
a pinch of salt (not in my Gran's recipe, and not tried by me so far, but I think it would get rid of a faint flouriness of flavour)
The FCI's pâte sablée:
128g plain flour, sifted
75g unsalted butter, at room temperature
45g icing sugar, sifted
small pinch of salt
1 large egg yolk
Method
To make for a fairer comparison, I ditched the standard 'shortcrust pastry' technique to combine the shortbread ingredients (i.e. butter rubbed into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, brought together into a dough by hand) and instead used the following FCI pâte sablée method.
Place the butter, sugar and salt in a bowl. Cream together by beating with an electric mixer for about 4 minutes, or until the mixture is light and fluffy (see the second picture below).
Appearance just after mixing the sugar into the butter: hard and yellow
Pale, soft and fluffy after beating for around four minutes
If making pâte sablée, add the egg yolk and beat until fully incorporated. Turn off the motor and add the sifted flour all at once. Turn onto a slow speed and, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a spatula, beat until the flour is just incorporated. You can turn up the speed to medium once most of the flour has been mixed in, but starting any higher will blow flour dust everywhere. If the mixture is too dry and crumbly to come together into a dough, add half to one tablespoon of ice-cold water. Add slowly and carefully, using only as much as you need so that the dough doesn't get too wet.
Scrape the dough from the mixing bowl onto a sheet of baking parchment. Using your hands, shape into a rough log. Then, fold the front flap of paper up and over the dough and roll into a perfect cylinder about 6cm (2½ inches) wide. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for at least one hour (up to one week) or until well chilled.
Line a baking sheet with the baking parchment. Preheat oven to 170C.
Remove the dough from the fridge. Unwrap and cut the log with a sharp knife, crosswise, into 6mm-thick (quarter-inch) slices. Rolling the log slightly after each cut will keep its round shape and the biscuits a uniform size.
Place the slices on the prepared baking sheet, leaving enough room between each one for slight spread. Bake for about 15 minutes until golden around the edges. (To avoid a soft interior, you may also find that the pâte sablée requires slightly longer - it's hard to be definite as I've tried the recipe only once. Until I've done further testing, when I'll update this entry, I'd aim for a light golden colour all over. However, don't let them brown as much as in the picture above as I do think it spoiled the flavour.) To prevent the biscuits from becoming overdone on one side, turn the tray to face the opposite direction about halfway through cooking. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Store airtight for up to 3 three days.
Reader Comments (5)
Even though I wasn't able to take the blind taste test (sniff), I'm with you - I think shortbread would win out every time. And I agree, a pinch of salt always seems like a good idea to deepen the flavor!
Love the photos, especially the macro shots of the whipped up butter. It's 10:50pm and I'm just home from work and really want to whip up a batch of these cookies, but I think sleep is the better option at the moment, so I'll have to bookmark this and make it when I'm more alert. :)
oh! I love these bake-off and wish I had more time to make some at home.
for a good recipe of French shortbread, I recommend this one http://www.foodbeam.com/2007/01/14/rage-syndrome-inducing-%E2%80%93-pierre-herme%E2%80%99s-sables-au-chocolat-et-a-la-fleur-de-sel/
ok it totally has some chocolate so they're out of the category you're exploring. but do try them, they're FANTASTIC.
x
PS thank you for making me discover your blog.
mmmm, good work sonnda, the pics look delicious. My adventures with seitan continue, i had a delivery of vital wheat gluten today. x
Casey, you'll be with me in spirit at my next tasting!
Fran, let me know how you get on with the recipe. And look out for my upcoming post on semolina and rice flour variants - to be trialled with my 'study participants' any day soon ;-)
Hey Fanny, thanks for dropping by. And for the great link - can't wait to try choccie version of French shortbread. The dark magic can ONLY ever improve life can it not?!
Angharad, I am INTRIGUED by your forays into seitan production. What on earth does wheat gluten look like and what on earth do you have to do to it? Am sure there must be the makings of a blog post in there.... x