The fourth recipe I made from the Savory Tarts & Pies section (the 48th recipe overall in this book) of The Modern Baker by Nick Malgieri, was the one for Rich Pie Dough, on page 128. The fifth recipe I made from the book (the 49th recipe overall) was for the Olive-Oil Dough on page 132, and the sixth recipe I made from the book (the 50th recipe overall) was No-Roll Flaky Dough on page 133.
These are the three dough recipes that NM includes in the book for savory pies and tarts. I tried all three of them, but my official assignment was to post about the Rich Pie Dough, so I photographed that one. (We are not publishing recipes from the book, so if you like what you see, buy the book and bake along with or without us).
The ingredient list for the Olive-Oil Dough crust dough: all-purpose flour, salt, baking powder, eggs, olive oil, and water. This was my first experience with an olive oil dough for the crust and while it was easy to make, easy to work with, and easy to roll out, I did not care for the taste of it at all. It seemed heavy and oily and not at all tasty. That said, Mark liked it just fine. I'm probably not going to make this one again as I liked the other two doughs better and it wasn't something that Mark really cared one way or the other about.
The ingredient list for the No-Roll Flaky Dough: all-purpose flour, salt, baking powder, unsalted butter, and cold water. This dough tasted nicely and the main difference (besides the eggs in the Rich Pie Dough) is that the dough is just dumped into the tart pan and form-fitted to the pan without rolling it like a regular pie crust. While the taste is fine and it was fairly easy (and great if you don't have eggs the day you need a crust), I still prefer to roll my pie/tart crusts and fit them into the pan that way. The Rich Pie Dough crust performs so beautifully under the rolling pin that I'm not all that keen about dealing with trying to smush the dough into the pan in an even and attractive manner for the no-roll method, which takes me much longer than just rolling out the dough, so probably not making this one again either, but it did come out nicely in performance and tasted very good as well.
The ingredient list for the Rich Pie Dough: all-purpose flour, salt, baking powder, butter, and eggs. All the crusts are made in the food processor, which I find quick and easy and who doesn't love to push that button and see it all come together in the space of a less than a minute?
After it begins to come together in an almost-ball shape, the work is done, the dough is turned out onto a piece of plastic wrap.
The wrap is pulled over it, shaped into a disk gently, and popped into the refrigerator for an hour.
When the dough has chilled a bit, making it a little easier to handle and roll, it comes out of the refrigerator and is rolled to fit the size of the tart pan.
After fitting it into the pan and trimming off the top to make it even and pretty, I filled the tart and baked it as directed for the recipes.
The tart pan shown here is my new 6" size that I just got this week. I have 11", 9", and 4.5" pans but I wanted this 6" size because that is the size that the guys will eat in one sitting as a side dish (they aren't too fond of just having a tart for dinner and nothing else so I use it as an addition to dinner rather than the main meal...they are also not fond of eating the leftovers in savory tarts that my larger pans make) and the littler pans have too much of a crust-filling ratio. Anyway, the little 6" tart pan is lovely to work with.
One recipe of the Rich Pie Dough makes three of the 6" tart size doughs. The total dough weight is just short of 15 ounces, so dividing that into thirds leaves you with just short of 5 ounces of dough for each crust. I measured it on my scale, then wrapped each ball separately so I could just pull out the proper amount of dough for that pan. I used one of the doughs and froze the others, marking the plastic for ease of reference as I have various doughs sitting and waiting for various things for various pan sizes. It actually looks like I know what I am doing if you see them all sitting in the freezer ready to go.
All three of these doughs are extremely easy to work with and user-friendly even to the novice. Our favorite for the tarts is the Rich Pie Dough.
If you would like to bake along or be a part of the Modern Baker group, you will find all that, plus a tab to link to the blogs posting the Breads, with the blogroll here.