This is a wonderfully easy all-purpose pastry for fruit and other tarts. It goes together quickly and easily—do not lose heart at the point where it looks like a mass of crumbles. Follow the recipe and you’ll get a
beautiful pastry.
Makes enough pastry for a 10½-inch (27-cm) tart
Ingredients:
1¾ cups (230 g) unbleached all-purpose flour ½ teaspoon ne sea salt
½ cup (100 g) vanilla sugar
4 large egg yolks
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature but still warm
Note: You may make this in the food processor, but it isn’t as good and tender, and the ingredients don’t go together quite as well as when it is made by hand. When you put the ingredients in the well,
don’t leave the sugar touching the egg yolks and then walk away or become distracted before continuing with the recipe. Sugar will “cook”rawegg yolks, making little hard pieces of egg yolk. When you begin this recipe, finish it straight through for the best results.
Directions:
1. Sift the flour onto a work surface and make a large well in the center. Place the salt, vanilla sugar, and egg yolks in the well and mix them with your fingers. Pound on the butter to soften it slightly, add it to the well, and quickly combine it with the other ingredients, using the fingertips of one hand, until partly blended. Gradually work in the flour with the fingertips of both hands, pulling the flour from the side toward the butter mixture in the center, until large crumbs form. Continue blending the pastry by cutting it into pieces using a dough scraper. When the dough is smooth, gather it into a ball, then continue to work it by pushing it away from you and against the work surface with the heel of your hand and gathering it up with the dough scraper until it is pliable and thoroughly combined. Press the dough into a flat round and let it sit in a cool place for at least 30 minutes. Roll it out as specified in the recipe.
