Pâte Sucrée/ Sweet Tart Crust

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Pâte sucrée is one of the basic French pastry doughs which is commonly used as a tart crust. It’s sweet, buttery and crispy, and not difficult to make. This is very useful dough and can be kept frozen.

What is Pâte Sucrée?

Pâte sucrée is literally translated to “sweet dough” from French. Mainly used as a tart crust. There is another basic French pastry crust dough ‘pâte brisée’, but  pâte sucrée contains sugar not pâte brisée. Since pâte brisée is a more flakey tart shell, pâte sucrée is light and crispy like cookies. A less moistened filling is perfect for the sucrée dough.

What is the Difference between Pâte Sucrée and Pâte Sablée?

There is another basic french short-crust dough call “pâte sablée“. Pâte sucrée and Pâte sablée are made out of almost the same ingredients, but pâte sablée has a higher fat ratio. The French word sablée means “sand” in English, so the texture of pâte sablée is more crumbly. 

Ingredients for Pâte Sucrée

• Butter: Unsalted butter. Room temperature but not too soft. The ideal temperature is 55～64℉(13～ 18℃). Although I add a tiny amount of salt into the dough, always use unsalted butter
  
• Sugar: Confectioners or powdered sugar is better. Granulatted sugar doesn’t dissolve well.
  
• Egg: whole egg and egg yolk. Some recipes use only egg yolk.
  
• Flour : Pastry flour or cake flour is ideal but AP flour can be replaced

Other ingredient options

• Almond flour: some times almond flour is added into the dough in order to be a richer and crumbly dough
  
• Cocoa powder : for chocolate tarte crust

Pro Tips

Sucree dough is traditionally made by hand and directly on a work surface. However, you can also make this dough in a stand mixer or food processor. The most important tip to make this dough is to incorporate the ingredients without letting the butter melt. So make the dough in a cool room. Also, flour and eggs can be chilled before use. You shouldn’t roll the dough right away after you make it. Always use the chilled dough for rolling.

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How to Store the Sucrée dough?

The dough can be stored in a refrigerator for up to 3 days. You can also roll the dough onto the parchment paper and wrapped it, and freeze.  This way, you can keep the dough much longer, for up to one or two months.