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Pate Brisee is a versatile and easy-to-make puff pastry dough with a high fat-to-flour ratio, making it crumbly, flaky, and rich. The recipe involves cutting cold butter into flour, adding ice water, and smudging the dough to create tiny layers. It can be used for both sweet and savory recipes and can be frozen for up to three months.
Pate Brisee is a very light puff pastry dough. This dough is incredibly versatile and can be used in everything from quiches to chocolate tarts. It’s also extremely easy to make, busting the myth that pie dough is difficult to make.
You can also see pate brisee referred to as “fine pate brisee”. In French, this phrase literally means “short pasta,” a reference to the fact that it contains a very high ratio of fat to flour. It is this ratio that gives the dough its unique properties, making it crumbly, flaky and incredibly rich. This ratio also makes potato pate easier to work with, as it makes the dough more forgiving than other pie and tart doughs.
To make potato pate, take two and a half cups of flour, then cut into a cup of cold butter. Use a fork or spoon to mash the ingredients, being careful not to melt the butter into the flour. The goal is to create a loose granular mass by breaking the flour into small grains so that the mixture appears almost sandy. Next, dissolve a teaspoon of salt in a third cup of ice water, along with a teaspoon of sugar, and add the water all at once, using your trusty mixing utensil to pull the ingredients into the dough.
Then, wash your hands with cold water and use the heel of your hand to smear the dough against the side of the mixing bowl several times. This smudging action will create a multitude of tiny layers in the pate pate, making them act almost like flaky pastry; the result will be a light, fluffy dough, rather than thick and heavy. Use your hands to scoop the dough into a ball, which you can either roll out immediately or chill for an hour or so to make it more workable, especially if it’s hot. This dough can also be frozen for up to three months, in which case it should be thawed overnight before using.
This potato pate recipe makes enough dough for a covered pie; you can also halve it if you just need a bottom crust. For a sweeter dough, add more sugar; you can use up to a tablespoon in this recipe. For a tarter dough, reduce the sugar and a little salt. Leave some sugar in the dough when using it for savory recipes, as it will provide a nice counterpoint to the salty flavor. You can also add things like lemon zest, nutmeg and peanuts to the dough for extra texture and flavor.
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