Autumn Tarts

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Embarrassing admission no. 1: It is astonishingly difficult to remember that if you lift a tart pan from the bottom (or with one hand), it will obligingly come apart. There is no wrong time to remember this law of physics, but the very best moment is when removing a hot pie from the oven. Always use both hands, placed on opposite sides of the ring.

Pastry

As every beginning baker knows, a good pie crust has two essential characteristics: It's tender, and it's flaky. A few simple techniques will produce those results.

The bane of good pastry is gluten, a stringlike protein found in most flours. While essential to bread baking (its long, elastic threads form a framework that supports the expanding air bubbles in the rising loaf), gluten produces a dense, tough pie crust if allowed to develop. So the two things that activate gluten-warmth and handling-are good for bread and bad for pies. Crusts turn out better if all ingredients are cold (especially the fat), if the working surface is cool, if the dough is refrigerated before it's rolled and if it spends as little time in your warm hands as possible. The same precautions help produce flakiness, which results when small particles of fat and flour remain discrete; handling and heat tend to melt the fat, thus dispersing it uniformly through the flour and harming the crust. (This is why oil is not a satisfactory fat for pie crusts.)

For dessert tarts, the traditional (and best) crust is a short dough sweetened with sugar and enriched with an egg yolk. The bad news about this crust (which tastes something like shortbread and is almost good enough to eat by itself is that it tears fairly easily when you're rolling it out, because it's so rich. The good news is that it's child's play to patch.

Short, Sweet Pastry

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour 2 tablespoons sugar 1/2 cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter 2 tablespoons ice water 1 egg yolk, lightly beaten

Combine dry ingredients in large bowl. With two sharp knives or a pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Mix egg yolk with ice water, add to bowl, and stir quickly with fork, just until moisture is absorbed. If dough will not hold together, add more ice water, a teaspoon at a time, until you can form dough into a ball. Gather up dough, flatten into a disk, wrap in foil or plastic wrap, and refrigerate 30 minutes.

On a lightly floured board or counter top, roll pastry to a thickness of 1/8 inch. Roll it up loosely over the rolling pin, then unroll it onto the tart pan. Lifting the edges of the crust, fit it into the pan, tucking it into the bottom creases and pressing it into the flutes along the sides. (Don't stretch the dough, or it will simply shrink back when baked.) Trim pastry by rolling the rolling pin across the top of the pan. Chill until ready to use (your final chance to relax the gluten). Makes enough pastry for one eight- to 11-inch tart.

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