Shortcrust Pastry

Directions

• Cut butter into flour and salt until particles are size of small peas.
• Sprinkle in water, 1 tablespoon at a time, tossing with fork (I prefer to use my hand) until all flour is moistened and pastry almost cleans side of bowl (1 to 2 teaspoons water can be added if necessary). Do not over-knead.
• Gather pastry into a circle (flattened with the palm of your hand) and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
• Pre-heat oven to 210C.
• Shape pastry into flattened round on lightly floured slab. If you want to avoid using flour, use parchment paper to avoid the pastry from sticking to the rolling pin.
• Roll pastry 2 inches larger than inverted pie plate with floured rolling pin (use an 8-9 inch wide pan that’s an inch deep).
• When rolling out pastry, keep circular by occasionally pushing edge in gently with sides of hands.
• Fold pastry into quarters (don’t flatten or it’ll stick, just want to loosely place edges together to fold it twice into a quarter circle).
• Place in pie plate with point in center. Unfold and gently ease into plate, being careful not to stretch pastry.
• At this point you can either blind bake the pastry or add the filling and then bake it.