Secrets of making shortcrust pastry
tips from Chef Hanna
● Shortbread is very demanding on temperature. It is important that all the dough ingredients are cold. This dough also ‘rests’ in the refrigerator.
● You can roll out the dough on the table, between sheets of parchment, between silicone mats, between cling film.
● After rolling out, in most cases you also need to let the dough set in the cold.
Shable is a common name for shortbread. There are three types of it:
1. Chopped, when flour and oil are intensively chopped and thus combined. Such a dough comes out with a puff effect.
2. Sand – here flour and oil are combined in a mixer or ground by hand. It turns out more homogeneous.
3. Sugar dough has a high sugar content and is suitable only for cookies.
● The dough should be baked at high temperatures (about 392 °F 200 °C). A strong contrast is important here so that the sides do not slide down the walls of the form.
● Here it is permissible to replace part of the flour with an alternative one (rye, buckwheat, oat, etc.). For a chocolate taste, part of the flour can be replaced with cocoa.
● Shortbread can be baked in different forms. A professional option is a confectionery perforated ring.
