Artichoke Heart Tart with Paprika Pâte Brisée (shortcrust pastry)

A warm and sunny tart, a little about ratios, and a discount code!

Happy birthday, Save Me a Slice!

I can’t believe it’s been a full year since I started this newsletter and that i’m sharing my 30th recipe with you today. wow.

Thanks to everyone who reads, shares, and bakes these recipes. And a special thanks to the paid subscribers who keep me going. Your generosity and input over the last year has meant so much to me and I wouldn’t have the time or funds to make this possible without ya’ll. 💖

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As a special thanks, i’ll be running a discount this week for new paid yearly subscriptions. With a paid subscription, you get full access to every recipe I’ve developed over the past year plus every upcoming post I make here on Save Me a Slice! You also have the ability to comment and message me directly for all your baking questions and troubleshooting needs!

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Today’s recipe is all about playing around with fundamentals. Tweaking two standard recipes and relying on an easy store-bought ingredient yields a tart with layers of flavor and plenty of room for customization.

Pâte Brisée is the French cousin to American pie dough. Meaning “Broken pastry” because of its crumbly texture created by working fat more thoroughly into the flour. Occasionally you'll see an egg yolk or milk added for extra tenderness, though it’s not as common. Pâte brisée has been used since medieval times and while there are differences throughout history the basic players are always flour, butter, and water.

In Michael Ruhlman’s book, Ratio (which I first learned about from

Kassie Mendieta

and have seen mentioned by many recipe developers since - it’s great!) his pie dough/pâte brisée is 3 parts flour, 2 parts fat, and 1 part water. Ratios are a great way to understand the balance of ingredients that a recipe needs in order to be successful. Success here meaning that the recipe is a reliable way to reach a known outcome.

Learning how to scale up a banana bread recipe.

The beauty of knowing a ratio is trifold. Firstly, you can now make this recipe anywhere - without a scale or even without measuring cups/spoons. A “part” can be almost anything. My grandmother made biscuits using a memorized ratio and a small porcelain teacup she kept on her windowsill. Secondly, you can now more easily scale your bakes up or down by changing the size of the part. Exchange that teacup for a bucket and you’ve made biscuits for the whole neighborhood.

Lastly, (and the benefit I appreciate and utilize the most) is that knowing these ratios opens the door to creatively changing baked goods to make them your own. Ratios are like the playground fence. As long as you stay within the outer boundary, you can do almost whatever you want. Of course there’s a little more to it than that - after all, each ingredient has its unique function that can’t always be removed without causing harm.

Try swapping 100% of a bread recipe’s wheat flour for cocoa powder and in place of the gluten and starches that create a beautifully risen and chewy loaf of bread, you’d have bowl of wet and soupy chocolate. You may have swapped a dry “part” for another equally measured ingredient but you’ve chosen a replacement that lacks the same properties and characteristics. Just as important as knowing a ratio is understanding the role that each ingredient plays. When you understand both, the world of baking creatively and authoring your own recipes really opens up.

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Speaking of ratios…

One of my favorite ratios is the basic custard ratio:

1 large egg per 1/2 cup (113g or 4 oz.) milk

The milk can be swapped out for heavy cream or a mixture of the two depending on how rich you want your custard to be. This ratio works for sweet or savory applications. (start with 1 tablespoon sugar per cup of dairy) Bread pudding, creme brûlée, quiche, the list goes on.. So many delicious possibilities from one ratio!

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A few notes…

• In my experience, the best tart pans you can buy are secondhand vintage ones without a nonstick coating. Most tart doughs are rich enough in butter to not stick to their pans anyway and the modern teflon coated pans are actually *too* slippery and can cause the vertical walls of your tart shell to fall and shrink while baking.

• If your tart shell does shrink dramatically, you can scale down the filling (using the ratio above!) or save the custard to bake in a small greased ramekin or scramble the mixture tomorrow for a runny cheesy egg moment on toast.

• While par baking, your crust may have developed some cracks that could leak custard after filling. Use a little goat cheese to patch these cracks. I use a clean finger or an offset spatula to smooth the goat cheese into any problem spots. I also always bake my tarts on a sheet tray rather than directly on the oven rack, to catch any leaks.

• The artichokes here can be replaced with caramelize onions, sautéed mushrooms, briny olives, so many options. Pick something very flavorful that’s already cooked and not too wet, so that it doesn’t disturb the setting of the custard. Roasted broccoli would be great here!

• This tart won’t achieve a lot of color without the last step of adding more parmesan and broiling it briefly. Keep an eye out because the tart can go from beautifully bronzed to burnt very quickly.

• If you don’t like goat cheese, swap with mascarpone or more finely shredded parmesan!

Paprika Pâte Brisée (shortcrust pastry)

makes one 9 inch tart