Flaky Tart Crust Recipe - Food & Drink Recipes

2½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons (1½ sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into ¼-inch cubes
5 tablespoons solid vegetable shortening
A small glass of ice water
1 9-inch tart pan (with fluted edges and removable bottom)

Dump the flour, sugar, and salt into the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade, and pulse a couple of times to make sure the salt is distributed evenly throughout the flour.
Add the butter and the shortening all at once, and pulse five to ten times, until the mixture forms little balls, like moist crumbs, and no chunks of butter or shortening remain. You must pulse, not run, the food processor. The worst thing that could happen at this stage of the crust-making game would be for the flours and fats to come together completely into a paste.
Remove the blade from the food processor, and dump the crumbs into a big bowl. Sprinkle a tablespoon of ice water over the surface of the crumbs. Repeat with 3 more tablespoons of ice water.
Use your hands or a wooden spoon to bring the dough together. Add more water if you have to, 1 tablespoon at a time. The dough should be just past crumbly and just barely coming together. You don’t want it to be so wet that it sticks together or turns sticky-white in color.
Cut the dough in half, press each of the halves into a disk, and wrap the disks in plastic wrap. Refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes before rolling it out.
If you are par-baking or prebaking your crust, position your oven racks so that one is in the center, and preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Roll out one disk of dough to 3/8 inch thick. Fit the dough into your tart pan.
For a prepared crust, refrigerate the dough that has been fitted into a tart pan until you’re ready to use it.
For a par-baked crust, prick holes in the tart dough with the tines of a fork. Line the bed of the tart with parchment paper or aluminum foil, and weigh it down with pie weights or dried beans. Place the tart shell on the center rack in the oven, and bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. Remove the tart shell from the oven, and remove the paper and weights from the pan. Return the tart shell to the oven, and bake it for another 5 minutes, until the bed of the tart shell appears dry. Remove the tart shell from the oven, and set it on a wire rack to cool.
. For a prebaked crust, follow the instructions for the par-baked crust, but increase the second baking time to 15–18 minutes, or until the tart shell is golden brown all over.