Shortcrust Pastry Case

You can bake a shortcrust pastry case for a sweet or savoury tart or quiche using either store bought or homemade pastry.  Some of the pastry you can buy in good supermarkets is made with butter and you might struggle to tell the difference between it and homemade pastry if baked properly.  If you want to make your own, it really is very simple.  Click here for the recipe.

All you need to do once you have your pastry (whether home made or otherwise) is to roll it to fit the tin and pre-cook it so that it is crisp and biscuity and ready for the quiche or tart filling.  Savoury tarts are usually filled and then put back into the oven again so that the filling cooks and sets.  Some sweet tarts are simply filled with a custard or other filling that doesn’t require cooking so the case may not be cooked any further.

Because you want the base of the tart/quiche to be flat you prick the base of the uncooked tart and then weigh the bottom down with baking beans or something similar for the first part of the cooking. you can buy ceramic baking beans from specialist kitchen stores and some of the larger supermarkets but if you don’t have these, fear not, as you can simply use rice or any dried beans from the cupboard and then keep these for future baking. (Don’t try and cook and eat them after you have used them as weights though!!)

1. Preheat the oven to 200˚C or 190˚C Fan.
2. Take your pastry dough from the fridge and using a little flour on a bench top, or rolling between two sheets of clingfilm, roll the pastry out so that it is flat, the same thickness and larger than the quiche or flan tin to be covered.  You want it nice and thin but not too thin so that the filling would seep through it.
   
3. Lift the pastry (you can do this by rolling it loosely around the rolling pin and then lifting the pin and unrolling it over the tin) and drape over the tin, gently easing the pastry into the corners and fluted sides.
   
4. Using a sharp knife, trim off the excess pastry around the top of the tin and use a fork to prick the base of the pastry. (You can use the excess pastry to make something else). Then refrigerate for 30 minutes.  (This helps prevent the pastry from shrinking in the tin).
   
5. Cover with a disc of baking paper and weigh down with baking beans (see the note above).
   
6. Put the tin in the oven for 15 minutes then remove the baking paper and baking beans (keep these so you can reuse them next time) and put the tin back into the oven for another 10-15 minutes until the pastry is a light golden brown.