Pate Brisee is a French term that translates to ‘short paste’. It can also be referred to as ‘broken paste’. You and I and the other folks in the room will know it as your basic pie crust dough. Not to be confused with the American interpretation of pie crust dough, in class we focused on the ‘classical’ preparation for this dough, with the goal of a lighter and more tender pie crust than its American derivative. The basic recipe for this particular dough consists of nothing more than water, butter, and flour in a ratio of 1 to 2 to 6 and a pinch of salt. That’s it. As we were all about to learn, the real challenge is in assembling the dough. The actual technique is easy, getting it right is a bit tricky. Although some recipes do allow for the preparation of the dough in a food processor, we’d be using our hands for the entire process and following the classical French method in order to be able to see and feel exactly how our doughs would come together.
It seems as though we have a new arrival in our Monday Baking Labs. Class, meet gluten…gluten, meet class. I offer the formal introduction because we will be spending lots of time on this subject over the next few months. Depending on what you intend to bake, gluten can either be your best friend or your mortal enemy. Gluten is a protein that is found in flour and is activated when flour comes in contact with moisture and mechanical action. If the goal is to make really sturdy and hearty breads with lots of elasticity, then you would want lots of gluten. If the goal is to create light, flaky and tender things, like pie crusts, the goal is to retard the formation of gluten as much as possible. As some gluten production is inevitable, for the class, the trick would be to use exactly the right amounts of water and mechanical action (our hands, in this case) in order to bring the dough together, while remaining in a state of heightened awareness in order to minimize the production of gluten in our doughs.
Every single step of this recipe takes gluten production into consideration. To begin, its best to begin with a cold surface…the metal tables in our kitchen work well. The flour and salt is dumped out onto the table and the butter, which has been chilled, is broken (hence the name ‘broken paste’) into the dough with your hands (in French, the technique is ‘sabler’…to reduce to sand, although that is a bit extreme here). If your hands run hot, keep an ice bath nearby for dunking purposes. Why all of the fuss to make everything cold? Because the cold will inhibit gluten production. Why all of the fuss to break the butter into the flour and coat as much of the flour particles with butter as possible? Because when baked, all of that butter will help to create pockets in the dough, essentially making the dough flaky. At this point, Chef D mentioned the difference between flaky and tender. I never really considered there to be a difference but when you think about it, the two are actually opposites. Most people might wish for a pie crust to be both flaky and tender but by definition, how can something be tender and also be flaky and crisp. The key to controlling the final tenderness/flakiness is the final size of the butter particles after being incorporated with the flour. Smaller butter pieces will yield a more tender dough, and as Chef D said, “flaky is overrated’. I think she has a point. Why bother with a pie crust that is so lacking in tenderness that it can’t even be sliced?
With the butter incorporated into the flour, next add in ice water, one tablespoon at a time, until there aren’t any dry flour particles remaining. We used a ‘fluffing’ technique (again, the French call it ‘papillon’) with our hands to avoid overworking the dough. After the water is added, the dough is brought together and flattened out with the heel of your hand (called ‘fraisage’) as little as possible…just enough to flatten it to expose more surface area to allow for quicker chilling in the next step. Immediately chill the dough for at least 30 min to relax the gluten. Then the dough is rolled out, preferably on a cold surface again, using an absolute minimum of passes until the desired thickness has been obtained. And that’s basically it. We covered a lot more in class, including some potential substitutions and enhancements to the basic dough, which I will point out where necessary.
I was assigned the Three-Nut Pie, which is basically a Pecan Pie made with hazelnuts, walnuts, and almonds instead:
The dough was fairly tricky to make and my rolling technique was sub par. I ended up with a very misshapen dough that was hard to fit into the 10″ cake pan that the recipe called for and once in, the edges refused to stand up straight. Using a technique called ‘blind baking’, I baked it for about 15 min total without the filling to ’set’ the crust (it was filled with pie weights to help hold the shape). Aside from the aesthetic challenges that my recipe presented (hey look everyone, it’s a Rustic Three-Nut Pie), I didn’t have too many other snafus. Oh, except for when I burnt my nuts…the roasted nuts I used for the filling. Oh yeah, I also nearly wasn’t able to remove the pie from the pan in one piece, but after a good 10 minutes of prodding, poking, and begging, it relinquished its grip of the pan bottom.
Who wants a slice? I actually enjoyed it very much. The hazelnuts added a really distinct flavor to the pie. Next time though, I will be sure to use more than the 6 oz of nuts that the recipe called for. The pie had a bit too much of the gelatinous filler and not enough nuts for my taste. FYI, that filling is nothing more than dark corn syrup, sugar, butter, and eggs. Chef D thought that my pie tasted great and while my dough was flaky and buttery, it could’ve been more tender. Damn you, gluten! My guess is that I overworked it while in the forming and rolling stage.
Next up are two different quiches. This one is roasted red and poblano peppers:
And this one is tomato, goat cheese and pesto:
These quiches were awesome. Two more additions to the list of items that I wouldn’t normally eat but tasted delicious in class (just like the eclairs and cream puffs from last week). If I remember correctly, Chef D also proclaimed these items to be tasty but with crusts lacking a certain tenderness. I personally didn’t need any additional tenderness, they were great just the way the were. The student that prepared the red pepper/poblano quiche also added grated cheese to his dough and wondered if that could’ve affected crust quality.
Carrot Upside-Down Tart with a very tender crust, perhaps benefiting from the addition of sour cream to the dough and also the elimination of the ‘fraisage’ (hand flattening) or maybe just benefiting from good technique:
Sanbusaks. A lamb-raisin-pine nut mixture encased in a yogurt-based variation of pate brisee and baked. I hope this isn’t the only time we have something meaty in our Baking Lab.
The dough on these little guys was also very tender. Another thing that we learned in class was that we could influence the dough’s tender/flaky aspects by varying the fat that was used. For example, using all shortening instead of butter practically guarantees a tender product, but the sacrifice is that it looses the buttery flavor. We’d also learn that using milk/cream/egg and also adding sugar could also have a big effect on final crust quality. A pate sucree, intended to be used for sweet preparations, reaps the tenderness giving properties of eggs and sugar, the latter being hydroscopic, which means that it pulls moisture away from the flour, thus inhibiting gluten production. Examples of pate sucree products prepared in class include this Fresh Fruit Tart (w/ nut crust), filled with Pastry Cream:
This Italian Rice Tart (a big surprise…I never liked rice pudding nor believed that rice had a place in any dessert item, yet this tart made me a believer):
And this Pear Tart w/ Almond Cream:
One student also prepared Blueberry Turnovers, which contained cream cheese in the dough, resulting in a very tender, and tasty final product.
Overall, I’d say another successful day for the class as a whole. Everyone’s final products came out great and I feel that we’re all starting to get used to our temporary home in the smallish, basement kitchen that we now affectionately call the dungeon. Step in at 8:30 am and prepare to not see daylight until around 4:30 pm or so. Unless you’re on kitchen cleanup duty…then you might get a glimmer of sunlight at 4:15 when you take a short walk to the dumpster while carrying out the day’s trash. The life of a culinary school student can be quite glamorous.
