Types Of Pie Crusts

There are a few types of different pie crusts, when discussing traditional French pastries:

• Pâte Brisée
• Pâte Sucrée
• Pâte Sablée
• Pâte Feuilleté

Each varies in ingredients used and mixing technique. They produce different results, used in different types of pies.

Pâte Brisée

The name means “broken pastry”. This is your typical pie crust, one that is used in many American pies. It’s the defacto crust of choice for savoury tarts and quiches.

Butter is cut into the flour and water is added. The dough is gently mixed and slowly brought together. The goal is to minimize working the dough and forming gluten. Because gluten is not formed, the crust will be flaky and crumbly.

This pie crust will shrink out of the oven.

Pâte Sablée

The name means “sandy pastry”. It uses the same ingredients as Pâte Brisée, with addition of sugar and eggs. The texture is similar to a shortbread cookie. It’s coarse and sandy, pressed into a tart pan rather than rolled out.

The crust is typically blind-baked. It’s not meant to be used with fillings that cook in the oven. This crust is often used in either fruit tarts or curds.

Pâte Sucrée

The name means “sweet pastry”. It’s like the Pâte Sablée but using the creaming method. The eggs and sugar are creamed first, same as you would for a cookie recipe. The result is a crumbly, sugar cookie texture.

Pâte Feuilleté

The name means “laminated pastry”. It’s known as puff pastry. The pastry is very flaky and delicate. It has the same ingredients as Pâte Brisée but applies a different technique.

The dough is rolled out and a butter sheet is applied. The dough is folded onto itself, creating aligned planes of butter. The process is repeated until 25-100 butter layers are formed. When baked, the butter will release steam and puff up. Since the dough is laminated, the entire sheet will puff, resulting in many light, delicate layers.

This dough is very time-consuming and difficult. It’s one of the few things that most bakers will recommend you buy pre-made instead.

If you really want to make homemade puff pastry, rough puff will achieve most of the desired effect. Rough puff is essentially Pâte Brisée but given a few rounds of lamination. The lamination will provide the sheets of flakiness. Though the layers will not be uniformly laminated, for many dishes the rough puff is more than adequate substitute.