If you’ve ever made pastry before, you’ll know that you need to start with cold fat, which you then cut into flour before stirring in a small amount of cold water. The whole idea, of course, is to keep things as cool as possible so you don’t melt the fat. And it’s kind of a pain in the backside, but we do it because pastry is delicious and I suppose it’s not really that bad, compared to making phyllo pastry or something.
And then there’s this. A friend of mine who is a professional chef told me about this cool recipe from David Lebovitz. It flies in the face of everything anyone knows about pastry. You start by putting things in the oven. A 410ºF oven, at that.
And then after all the fat is melted and browning, you add the flour and stir until you have a brown, goopy, greasy paste. The other people in the kitchen will laugh and tell you that you’re really messing up dinner. But you aren’t, I promise!
Dump your greasy goo into your tart pan and spread it out a bit with a spoon (remember, it’s about 400ºF!), and then let it cool until you can touch it. At that point you’ll need to smoosh it down across the bottom of the pan and up the sides. Then bake it at 410ºF for 15 minutes, until golden brown. Et voila. Super easy pastry.
I’ll let David do the rest: French Tart Dough Recipe.
