What is Sable Breton?
Sable Breton is a French butter cookie originating from Brittany, west of France. You will often fine Breton Cookies all around France in disc shapes and pastry chefs love using it as a base for tarts. It usually has an airy texture thanks to the incorporation of baking powder in the recipe.
What makes a good Sable Breton Cookie?
Good quality butter. Because this cookie involves quite a large amount of butter, it is important that you use only good quality butter for the recipe. I used Australian Western Star unsalted butter.
Sable Breton
This recipe makes around 24 cookies
Plain Flour 240 g
Fine Salt 4 g
Castor Sugar 170 g
Baking Powder 24 g
Unsalted Butter 180 g
Egg Yolks 80 g
Egg Wash
Yolks 20 g/ 1 yolk
water 1 tablespoon
Mix until well combined
Method:
Preheat oven to 170°C.
1. Place the plain flour, salt, sugar and baking powder into a stand mixer bowl fitted with a paddle attachment.
2. Add the room temperature butter (not solid and not melting in your hands either).
3. Mix over medium speed until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs and there are no big lumps of butter.
4. Add in all the yolks and mix until the ingredients just come together and form into a dough. Do not be tempted to over mix.
5. Transfer the pastry over a cling film, flatten in to a square and wrap. Leave in the fridge to rest overnight or for at least 4 hours.
6. Once the pastry have rested, remove from the fridge and lightly dust the bench with plain flour. Roll the pastry out with a rolling pin to approximately 0.5 cm in thickness. Cut with a cutter and place it inside a well greased tart ring. Dust more flour if the pastry starts to stick to your rolling pin.
7. Brush the top of each cookie with the egg wash, place the pastry in to the fridge until the egg wash dries up slightly, then remove the tray from the fridge.
With the help of a fork, gently draw a crisscrossed lined on top of the cookies.
8. Place the cut out sable on to a tray with enough space between the cookies (they will spread out quite a bit during baking) and bake in the preheated oven for 12 - 15 minutes or until it has a light golden color.
Alternatively if you want a thicker and more uniformed cookies, roll out the sable dough to the same thickness and bake the cookies in individually well greased tart rings.
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