Cook Advice / baking /

Shortcake dough

in
5.gif

Here is simple way to prepare dough for shortcake pastry.
Very important rule - all ingredients must be chilled until very cool. You may even wash your hands in cold water before start kneading dough.

Step 1

Sifti the flour on working surface to make a dome.

Step 2
2.gif

Dicei butter (or margarine) and immediately start making dough.

Step 3
3.gif

Make a hollow in flour and put in it diced batter, then add sugar, eggs, salt and everything recipe calls for.

Step 4
4.gif

Then quickly make a dough with cold hands, using more your palms but fingers. Form it into a ball and cover with foil, to prevent withering.
Doughi has to be cooled in refrigerator for minimum 30 min, better for 2 hours or over-night. If you're in haste, you may chill it in freezer compartment for 10 min.

Step 5
5.gif

Roll chilled dough on lightly floured surface. Note that too much flour will make a dough fragile and not so flexible. To prevent it, you may add in dough less sugar then recipe calls for, and powder surface with sugar, or even better with powdered sugar.
If you need to roll a thin dough, better put it in between 2 foil layers, roll, and then transport the dough to baking pan on the lower layer of foil. And it's better to use special-covered rolling-pin.
After placing dough on a pan, put to bake immediately. It does not like to wait!

Additional Info

Tips:
You may add 1 tsp of vinegar in a dough, it will become more crumble.
You may substitute one-third of flour with starch. The dough will be especially crumble.
Short dough likes to be cold, you may freeze it. But be careful while thawing - don't let it become too soft otherwise it will lose its form and fall apart while beeing baked.
If you've got a fat dough, you may not grease the pan. If you're using springform pan, line its bottom with parchment.