How To Make Shortcrust Pastry

I am going to show you how to make a shortcrust pastry. It's actually incredibly easy. I know you can buy it in a shop but it is so easy to do and you can do it yourself.

I am going to make enough, probably for two to three large bases, so this is quite a lot of pastry. Half of this, if you are going to make one for yourself. First of all, I am going to put my flour; this is plain flour here in my mixer, that's enough, and the basic rule of shortcrust is you use half as much butter as flour.

If you have a blender, you can just do it by hand in a bowl, make sure you got all the butter through the flour for a great consistency. So, I am going to do it for a couple of thirty seconds, maybe turn your blender a bit to the side to get everything fully mixed. Perfect.

All the butter has been mixed with the flour and this is like a crumbled mixture. I am going to take this and put it back in a bowl. This is the controversial bit.

Maybe you can use water in the traditional way or you can use an egg. I am going to put a bit of salt into it and I am going to use one egg and then about maybe two to three times as much water as egg. It really does depend on how much liquid your mixture needs to bind it together.

You just have to add little bit at a time, bringing it together until you get a nice soft dough. You don't want it to be sticky; you don't want it to be crumbling. The egg in there adds a little bit of richness.

If you don't have an egg or if you don't want to use an egg then, water is the more traditional way of making it. You have to add little bit at a time. As I have done, it's not sticky, it's nice and soft, it's got enough moisture in there.

When you press it, it doesn't just crack. That's perfect. What I am going to do is I am going to get it on a surface and make it into a nice ball.

In fact, if you put half of it in a freezer in this state, you can use it and wrap it in a thin film and leave it for maybe an hour and then it's ready to make whatever you want. It's ready to make a nice pastry or a pie. It's really versatile to make. .