Rustic Fruit Tart
February 27, 2003

Although I prefer cooking savory dishes to sweet ones, any cook worth their salt knows how to make a good piecrust. Dissatisfied with my piecrust, I was making pie less often to the point of not at all. Thus the rub we so often find in cooking: no improvement in the product, no desire to improve it either. While surveying the magnificent pastry case at Chef’s Corner the other day, I noticed some exquisitely crafted Crostada (Crow-sta-daa) beautifully dusted with blankets of confectionary snow mimicking the weather outside. After a brief conference with Chef Josef Harreowyn, he quickly diagnosed my baking problem: use PASTRY flour. Oh yeah- how I’d forgotten that vital detail! Believe me, this little adjustment works like a charm.

- 1 cup Crisco
- 1 Teaspoon salt
- 2 ½ cups pastry flour
- 3 Tablespoons water
- Your favorite pie fruit filling
- Confectionary sugar, Turbinado sugar

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Mix Crisco, flour and salt with a pastry blender until tiny beads of dough begin to form. Add water and combine with a fork (hands make the dough tough). Form by turning dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap 2/27/03 The Everyday Gourmet by Kim Dannies

and pack into a ball; seal and chill at least 30 minutes. Place two sheets of plastic wrap overlapping slightly, dust with flour; place dough in center and dust with more flour, cover with plastic wrap. Roll out a 12” disk and place on a pizza pan covered with parchment paper. Prepare fruit filling.

Kim Dannies is a graduate of La Varenne Cooking School in France. She lives in Williston, VT with her husband, Jeff, and three college–aged daughters who come and go. ©2008