There's hundreds and hundreds of recipes of doughs out there.
One of my favorites is simple very light tart shell.
I'm going to show you all the steps to make a good one.
Think about the tart shell as a canvas.
That's your drawing board.
That's what you are going to use to make a beautiful tart.
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As you can see, all the ingredients are in front of me.
And this is very important.
This is pastry chef way, actually what
we call mise en place.
I remember one of the first time I actually
cook at home for my girlfriend, I
had to scale out all the ingredients to be able to cook.
And I used all the bowls in the kitchen.
And she was a little shocked to see that the cabinet was empty
and I've used everything.
That's the way I cook.
That's the way I learned, and I think
it's very important to have everything
in front of you measured in scale
before you start doing anything.
So here, we have flour, cornstarch, eggs, butter,
powdered sugar, and a little bit of salt.
So you're going to start mixing the powdered sugar
with the butter in the mixing bowl.
It's very important to scale everything
separately because as you can see,
everything is pretty much white.
It looks similar.
Just in case the phone rings, you
have to run away to do something else, you come back,
you remember exactly what you have.
We're going to start creaming the butter and the sugar
together.
Then we'll mix the flour, the cornstarch, and the salt,
and incorporate this into the mixing bowl with the egg.
For this, we use the paddle.
The whisk will be too weak.
It will break the whisk.
So the paddle is the best to mix this dough.
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I'm going to then add the flour, cornstarch, and salt together.
Sometimes people ask me is it important to sift everything.
I say it used to be, but now ingredients
are made so they are ready to use.
So unless you have real clump in your flour,
you shouldn't be shifting everything.
We combine everything together to make sure it's mixed
properly.
And then here I have vanilla bean.
So vanilla is one of my favorite ingredient.
I always prefer real vanilla over the extract.
The extract always have this artificial alcoholic flavor
and the fresh vanilla bean is, of course,
like very floral and very light.
Press down on the vanilla to make it flat,
and then use a paring knife and cut it the half long ways.
So this will allow us to cut through the vanilla
and extract the seeds.
The seeds are now right here.
I will take the back of my knife, I'll press it down,
and I'll push it all the way through.
And you will see these little black pieces are the vanilla
seeds that you need to incorporate into your dough.
So, of course, vanilla is very expensive.
I don't ever waste anything.
This can be used also to infuse into a milk
for different preparation, for a pastry cream, for instance.
Even after that, I always save it.
Rinse it off, dry it in the oven for a couple hours,
and blitz it, turn it into a powder
that I can use for other preparation as well.
We're then going to add the egg into the butter and sugar.
So I always crack my egg on the tabletop, on the flat surface,
and the reason why is that if you do it
on the side of the bowl, you always
risk to have shell falling inside your bowl.
So always on the flat surface.
Crack your egg.
You always get a good result.
[MIXER WHIRRING]
Before you add all the dry ingredients,
it's very important to look into the mix, the butter, eggs,
and sugar is never going to be perfectly smooth so don't
worry too much about it.
The most important is to keep everything just combined
together.
We're going to then add all the dry ingredients to it.
All the dry ingredients are added at the end
so we don't overmix the dough.
The last thing we want here is to have a dough with elasticity
that will shrink or move during the baking process.
[MIXER WHIRRING]
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When your dough is done mixing.
I will often pull the dough and finish mixing by hand
because I want these little pieces of flour
to be still here.
Then I'm sure that the dough is not overmixed.
So a rubber spatula will do the trick.
So the texture should be creamy, very smooth, a little thick.
It's almost like cookie dough.
You can see this little speck of vanilla
inside the dough which is good.
There's still a little bit of flour
on the side of the bowl which is OK.
The most important is really not to overmix this dough.
You can see like it has this thick consistency.
You're going to place this dough on parchment paper.
Why parchment paper?
It's to make sure that it stays flat.
It's actually easier, much easier to work with.
And lift this over and press it down.
So it's a very easy way to actually store things and keep
them the shape and the thickness you want.
Once the dough is done, we're going
to keep it flat on the sheet tray
and then place it in the fridge until it's
cold enough to roll down.
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I'm going to show you how to foncage.
Foncage is a French term for lining the tart shell.
So what I use here is actually a tart ring.
And I love using tart ring because you get very clean,
straight edge on the side.
One of the first time that I lined
tart shell in the kitchen, and one of my chefs
actually took the tart and put it against the light
to see through it.
He will want to see if the tart shell--
if the dough was thin enough.
A good tart should be able to be eaten
with just a fork or a spoon.
You don't actually need a knife to eat it.
So we'll start with the tart shell,
and to make sure that the dough sticks to the side,
we're going to use a little bit of butter.
So what I usually do, I put a little bit on my finger,
I press it against tart ring, and I spin it.
And this way, you have a very consistent.
It's very easy and very quick.
So there's no need to flour this.
What we want here is to stick the dough
on the inside of the tart ring.
So the butter will allow us to keep the dough against it.
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So this is the dough we made earlier
between two pieces of parchment paper.
What we're going to do is to roll it on a counter.
So for this, we're going to start
with putting a little bit of flour
on the counter and a little bit on top of the dough
as well to make sure it doesn't stick.
We're going to roll this as fast as we can, making sure we
keep it as round of a shape as possible to fit in a tart.
Always slide the dough to make sure there's
enough flour on the bottom so it doesn't stick.
And if the dough is too warm, it's
going to stick on the table, and you will then
have to put it back in the fridge.
So once you have the right size here,
you're going to place your ring right in the center.
Cut about two inch on the outside
and try to get a perfect disk, We'll
keep the scraps that you can use again.
The thickness should be about one eighth of an inch.
We're then going to fold this in half, put the flour side on top
and place the dough inside the ring.
We're going to push the dough on the side of the tart ring.
And we want to make sure that the flour's on top to make sure
that the side of the dough sticks on the butter.
You always want to work as fast as you can.
If it gets too warm, you can always
put it back in the fridge.
So what I'm doing, I'm using essentially all of my fingers
and to smooth out just a side.
So I'm focusing on the side of the dough
to make sure that I press against the ring mold
without changing the thickness of the dough.
And once this is done, I'll just take a paring knife,
I will cut the side of the dough, right here, the excess.
And you should be left with a thickness that
is consistent from one side to the other.
Then we'll place this on a sheet tray,
and we'll put it in the fridge just to let it cool
a little bit.
Make sure you save all the scraps.
Push them together.
Keep it flat put in the fridge and roll it later
to do maybe a small tart.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So our tart shell has been resting
in the fridge for about 10 to 15 minutes,
just until it gets cold.
And what most people do before they put it in the oven,
they duck the tart shell.
Ducking meaning they take a knife or fork
and they do holes on the bottom.
This is to prevent from the dough to puff up.
So I don't really like doing this, knowing that sometimes I
put ganaches or things that are really
soft on the bottom of the tart shell,
and this will just make everything
leak underneath the tart shell.
So the good way go about this is actually to do a blind baking.
So I use a simple coffee filter, and I fold it in half,
and then I fold it again in half to do a triangle.
And then I keep on folding it in half again and again until I
get a very tight triangle.
And I will place the tip of this triangle
in the center of the tart.
So you calculate for the diameter plus the little lip.
So we'll cut around here.
You can also cut keeping the shape round.
And then you will just open the coffee filter,
and you'll have a perfect disk that fits in the tart shell.
We'll then place it in the center, hold the middle,
and push to the side.
And if you don't have a coffee filter at home,
you can also do it with parchment paper,
but it's not always as soft and flexible as the coffee filter.
So once the tart shell is lined with the coffee filter,
we're then going to take some beans, any regular beans,
just enough to put weight on the tart.
You can also use salt or rice.
Just be careful make sure it's inside the coffee filter.
We're going to fill the top shell and push them down.
And now this is ready to go in the oven.
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So we're looking for this beautiful golden side
of the tart shell.
So it looks like it's baked and it's done.
And the bottom should still be a little bit white.
So what I usually do.
I will pull the paper.
I'll pinch it from both side.
I will lift it up all at once, try
to get all the beans together and put it back into the bowl.
So now the center is still a little bit white
and the side of the tart shell it's actually golden
and it's cooked.
We're going to cool just for a few minutes
and then we'll remove the tart ring.
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