Pasta Frolla

By norsegal8

Makes enough for a 9-inch lattice-top pie. Pasta frolla - pasta means 'paste' or 'dough' and frolla means 'tender' - is a sweet Italian pie dough. It is indeed tender, light and crumbly too, and a crust as commendable with savory fillings as with sweet. If you are new to crusts, this is a good starter dough. It's made-in-the-food-processor dough that is almost indestructible. And because of the relatively large amount of sugar, you don't have to worry about overworking it, nor do you need to be concerned if it cracks as it goes into the pie plate - everything is fixable.

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup sugar [I used an organic sugar with big, crunchy crystals, similar to demerara sugar]
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 stick (4 ounces) cold unsalted butter, or lard, cut into 8 pieces
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten

Preparation

Step 1

Pulse the dry ingredients in a food processor until blended; then add the butter and pulse until the mixture has the texture of fine cornmeal. [If this texture eludes you, it's much better to leave the dough slightly under-worked rather than over-process it]. With the machine running, add the eggs. Process until the dough forms a ball, about 1 minute.

Remove the dough and knead until smooth. [As you can see in the photo, I like to do this on a sheet of wax paper, in a futile effort to keep my kitchen clean].

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill until needed. [If less than thirty minutes, I think you can leave it out on the counter with no harm].

The recipe yields enough dough for a 9-inch pie with a lattice top; I didn't want to bother with the lattice so I lopped off one-third of the dough, wrapped it well in plastic wrap and a freezer bag, and froze it. The recipe says it will keep up to three days in the refrigerator or one month in the freezer.