1,587 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 77 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

Pastry doughs

To make a classic tart, you'll need a pastry of course, and if you don't use puff pastry (normally reserved for "fine", in french, tarts), you'll have a choice of shortcrust, shortbread, sweetcrust or "à foncer".

Let's take a look at the differences between these four.

10 K 4.4/5 (8 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Pastry Dough Shortbread Sweet Shortcrust Butter Sugar Flour Proportions Percentage

Last modified on: August 16^th 2024

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

Pastry doughs

First of all, what they have in common: All four are basic French pastry doughs, known as "sèches" (dry). They are made to fill molds, mainly for tarts or tartlets, and are very similar in appearance.
The minimum ingredients, common to all, are :

Flour
Butter
Sugar
Salt (a little)

The differences are more in the proportions, and particularly in the percentage of butter and sugar in relation to the flour.
Here's a table showing the values and percentages of each, for a recipe using 500g of flour:

	Shortcrust pastry (pâte brisée)	Shortbread pastry (pâte sablée)	Sweet pastry (pâte sucrée)	Pâte "A foncer"
Flour	500 gr	500 g	500 g	500 g
Butter	350 gr (70%)	350 gr (70%)	200 gr (40%)	150 gr (30%)
Sugar	20 gr (4%)	110 gr (22%)	250 gr (50%)	40 gr (8%)

And the same values in graph form:

pâtes en graphiques

As you can see, the doughs are very similar, only the proportions of sugar and butter vary. These are what characterize the dough, and determine what it's made for.

Of course, all this is related to the recipes I use, and which are on this same site, but there are practically as many as there are pastry chefs (pro or amateur), which obviously makes the proportions vary, and even sometimes the ingredients: some will tell you that there's no egg, but water or milk, in shortcrust pastry for example.

But here are a few general remarks:

As you'll have noticed, sweet pastry lives up to its name: it's very sweet.
There's a little sugar in pâte brisée, even though it's used in many savoury tarts, and this is important for coloring during baking (see this post on the subject).
Shortcrust pastry is very well accompanied by the same weight of almond powder as its weight of sugar, which makes it tastier and crunchier - it's even almost indispensable, in my humble opinion.
It might be tempting to replace butter with vegetable fat in these recipes, but that's not a very good idea, as the taste will be much worse.
To simplify things a little, we could say that shortcrust and "à foncer" dough are interchangeable for a recipe, and that it's the same for shortcrust and sweet pastry.
What they all have in common: They like the cold (which is your friend) and don't like to be kneaded or worked, otherwise they become elastic, so you need to mix their ingredients as quickly as possible.
What they all have in common: Ideally, they should be made the day before and left overnight in the fridge before use, and they freeze well raw, in the form of a large cake, not a ball.

To sum up: The four basic pastry doughs of French pastry-making: Brisée, sablée, sucrée and à foncer, differ above all in their ratio of butter and sugar to flour weight. These percentages determine their use.

Lasts posts

With vinegar?

When you buy a jar of pickles labeled “in vinegar,” you’re looking for their tangy, crunchy flavor to go with cold cuts, sandwiches, or salads. You expect to find small gherkins preserved in vinegar, with salt and herbs, but is that really the case?
July 15^th 20269034.8

Congratulate the chef

You've just finished a meal that you really enjoyed. The server approaches with the usual question: “How was it?” And then, as a natural reflex, you simply reply, “Yes, it was very good.” However, when the meal was truly outstanding, this brief exchange deserves a little more. .
July 7^th 2026784 25

Cut twice as fast

When you need to cut something long into small pieces, for example chopped chives or the stem of a spring onion, there's a simple gesture that doubles your cutting speed. Let's see how.
May 21^th 20262,0895

The other use for bowl scraper

Your kitchen or bakery utensils may include a horn (left) or a pastry cutter (right). These practical utensils are normally used to scoop the contents of a bowl or salad bowl - the horn - or to cut dough - the pastry cutter. But they also have another, very practical use - let's see what it is.
May 9^th 20261,8943

The strange foam of potatoes in milk

As you may have already noticed, when you cook potatoes in milk, especially in small pieces (slices or cubes) for a gratin for example, a surprisingly abundant white foam forms on the surface. Where does it come from?
April 26^th 20262,2785

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Circles vs. moulds tins

If you like to bake or make quiches, pies etc. you must surely have one or more pie pans at home, in different diameters and perhaps materials. They are indispensable, without them there is no way to make beautiful pies, and they work very well, but you have another option, instead of moulds,...
October 2^nd 202018 K5

A little sugar anyway

I'm coming back to something I've already told you about, but which focused on brioche dough, so I'll try to generalize about these doughs, which are generally sweet, but can also be used in savory recipes.
November 14^th 20208,1645

Beans in primeur

As I write this, it is the beginning of the short season for fresh beans. If you've never made them before and you're just starting out (and that's a great idea) you'll find that it's a bit time consuming to prepare, you have to shell them once, remove the beans, scald them to remove the skin (and...
June 4^th 202215 K

Good fridge management

We all have a fridge at home – it's an indispensible part of the kitchen and so much a part of the furniture that we tend not to pay it much attention. But often, out of habit, we don't use it properly. Here are a few tips to help you get more from your fridge. .
April 19^th 201130 K4.4

Clean your mixer easily

If you use a "bowl" or "blender" mixer, as opposed to a plunger, you've probably noticed that it's a bit of a hassle to clean it after use. And yet, with a simple trick, it can be done very quickly. See how here.
June 26^th 20249,4915