The recipe I am leaving you with today is Iginio Massari’s Milan-Style Sweet Shortcrust Pastry and is taken from one of his books on pastry. Perfect for tarts and cookies, it is aromatic and crumbly. The use of powdered sugar makes it fine and delicate to the palate, ideal for fruit-based mignons and tea biscuits.
There is a technical classification of shortcrust pastry and its variants that is drawn up according to the percentage of the ingredients from which it is made (flour, sugar, butter, eggs). To create the variants properly, of course, one must know how to balance the ingredients correctly.
Milan shortcrust pastry is composed of the same amount of sugar and butter, the sum of these two ingredients is identical to the weight of the flour while the weight of the eggs is always 10% of the total of the other three ingredients (flour, sugar and butter).
Translated in a simpler way, this is the correct proportion of the ingredients to make Milan shortcrust pastry:
- 1000 g (8 cups) flour
- 500 g (2¼ cups) unsalted butter
- 500 g (2½ cups) sugar/granulated sugar
- 200 g (4 large) eggs
to which we will need to add: flavorings to taste, salt and possibly yeast.
Ingredients for Iginio Massari’s Milano Shortcrust Pastry
- 250g (2 cups) all-purpose flour
- 125g (½ cup + 1 tbsp) butter
- 100g (¾ cup) powdered sugar (or granulated sugar)
- 25g (1 tbsp) acacia honey
- 50g (1 medium egg)
- ¼ vanilla pod (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
- 1 tsp lemon zest (grated)
- 1g (¼ tsp) salt
How to prepare Milan shortcrust pastry by Iginio Massari.
- Place the butter, honey, sugar, vanilla and grated lemon zest in the bowl of a planetary mixer (with K whisk). Mix the ingredients very well without whipping them.
- Add the salt and eggs, inserting them a little at a time so that they are well incorporated into the butter and sugar mixture.
- Add the sifted flour, working the shortcrust pastry briefly, just long enough to make the ingredients incorporate and make the mixture smooth.
- Pour the shortcrust pastry onto the lightly floured work surface and compact it. Form into a low, wide loaf, wrap it with plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator to set for 3 hours, preferably overnight.
- After resting in the refrigerator, you can use the shortcrust pastry to make the cakes you prefer; each cake will have a different baking procedure. I leave you with a few pointers for the simplest preparations:
For the cookies:
- Roll out the shortcrust pastry to a thickness of 5 mm, make the cookies with the molds you have available and let them rest in the refrigerator while the oven goes to temperature.
- Bake them in a static oven preheated to 170 °C (340 °F) for 10 to 12 minutes.
If you want to make soft cookies, simply add 3 g baking powder to the flour before kneading the shortbread.
For the tarts:
- For filled tarts, baking times vary depending on the filling and thickness of the shortbread.
- For a pastry shell with plain baking, roll out the pastry to 3 mm, line the micro-perforated or classic mold and bake at 170 °C (340 °F) for 20/25 minutes.
Bon Appétit!
