Week 4: Basic Shortbread Tart Dough, Pâte Sablée

 Week 4: Taste Testing

Last week, we finished comparing all three classes of Pâte Sablée tart doughs and converged on a reference, Split D. Now I want to see how we can improve this reference in both taste and texture. Before modifying the techniques and ingredients in Split D too much, I want to take a week to focus on tuning the flavor of the dough. The dough could use a little more sweetness, but sugar can cause a crisper shell, resulting in a tougher texture, so I will play around with the level of sugar added (for reference ~2.3 g, is ~1 tsp of powdered sugar). European-style butter with higher fat content (82% versus the usual 80%) could enhance flavor, but there are also a lot of warnings about it resulting in a greasy end product. Let's see if that is true by using a cultured, European-style butter that tastes delicious. Our splits are thus:

Splits D and I had indistinguishable texture, and Split I gave the little bit of sweetness that had been lacking from Split D. Split J was too sweet, and the sugar made it crisper and tougher, so ~1 Tbsp of powdered sugar more (only a ~1.3% difference in overall sugar content) was enough to alter the texture of the tart shell.

Left to right: Splits D, I, and J. Sugar content increases to the right. Split I had a bungled release.

Surprisingly, there was almost no difference in flavor or texture between Split K and Split D, so Split K is really not worth the added expense. Contrary to the warnings, it was not visibly greasier than Split D, though for even higher fat (~85-86%) butters, that could be the case. You can use European-style butter if you want to, but it's not going to help the flavor much.

Next week I will take our new reference, Split I, and work with different techniques of preparing the dough to see how they affect the final product.