Be a good pâte ! Bake a French and perfect Pâte brisée !

My dear, poor, non French people,

Today I decided to be bonne pâte. 

I guess you strange English speaking people would say I’ve decided to « be a good sport », which sums up well our cultural gap : when we think of somebody being nice, we compare him or her to a tasty baking dough. Not to a weird and tiring hobby.

Anyhow, let me give you my French and Perfect recipes for a good pie dough.

Pâte Brisée

Ingrédients

2 cups Flour

4 oz Butter

1 Egg Yolk

1/8 cup Chilled water or milk

Salt

Pâte brisée is the basic pie dough.

Literally, brisée means shattered, but I’ve never really understood why. 
The other strange thing is that there are as many different recipes for that dough as there are roundabouts and cheeses in my country : maaaaaaaaany.

I guess you could say that a pâte brisée is any dough that is not sablée or feuilletée, but I'll talk about them in a next blog.

If you're using a Stand Mixer, first pour the butter. 

Mix it until it looks like a cream.

Then add the salt. 

The flour. (little by little)

At the end, 
Add the egg yolk 
and the water or the milk.

Briefly knead the dough by hand,

Cover it with plastic wrap and let chill at least 30 minutes, better 2 hours, or why not, a night.

If you're doing it with your own original hands, you should follow the steps shown there by Anne-Sophie Pic.

This blog is a little treasure, given by a French grande dame.

Anne-Sophie Pic is the heiress of a cuisine dynasty: her grand-father, and then her father, were 3 Michelin stars restaurateurs for years.

Growing up, she didn't want to follow their steps, and chose to get an MBA instead. But when her dad suddenly died, she decided to learn it all, and take in charge the family's restaurant.

Et voilà, a few months later, she was (and still is) the only woman to be a 3 stars chef.

Sometimes, I promise, you and I will go to Valence and taste her Collection Pic Menu… Or go to her new restaurant in Paris, la dame de Pic...

But meanwhile, let’s enjoy the tips she give us on the web, like her recipe for a sweet pâte brisée.

La Pâte brisée sucrée :

Ingrédients

6,3 oz flour

2,5 oz powdered sugar

2 eggs yolks

2,6 oz butter

 

Mix the ingredients in the same way as the savory recipe of pate brisée.

Wrap it and let it rest in the fridge for more than 30 minutes before you use it.

Now you can use both those recipes for the tarte aux prunes and the quiche aux courgettes.

 And don't forget to add a little French touch to it, by building nice sidewalks ! (Or trottoirs)

That's how we call the side of the crust, trottoirs, as the sidewalk of the tasty road that a pie would be.

There's this big debate on wether one should eat it or not.

I'm in the pro-crust team on this one, especially whent the side of the crust is done as my friend Eric told me : by pinching it all around, just like that.

Voila !

Bonne cuisine, 

et Bon appétit !