A month of tarts & pies

Seven bakes, lots of learning

I set out on my DIY pastry school journey with one goal: practice each thing you might learn to make in pastry school at home. This seemed easy enough— create a list of “modules” and spend a month focusing on each category. When I started to break down “Tarts & Pies", I realized that pastry school focuses on very technical, French pastry but that I also wanted to practice making some American style pies. This post is a recap of me trying to cover as much ground as possible in 7 bakes.

If you want to see any of this baking in action, videos have been posted on my TikTok.

French Pastry

Lucky for me, there are plenty of resources online outlining “the three French pastry doughs you need to make any tart.” Matt Aldard’s Pastry 101 outlines three classics: Pâte Sucrée, Pâte á Foncer and Pâte Sablée.

Pâte Sucrée - Simple Fruit Tart

Pâte Sucrée is a sturdy, reliable sweet pastry dough that’s great for liquid fillings. I used it to make a simple tart filled with vanilla pastry cream and topped with fresh berries. I learned too late that Matt’s recipe makes enough dough for two 9” tarts, so my crust was very thick and hard to cut through. I’ll try this again soon with the correct crust thickness for a more delicate tart! I used Claire Saffitz’s pastry cream recipe for the filling. This was a very good tart. Filing it away for future entertaining!

Pâte á Foncer - Veggie Quiche

This is a go-to savory tart dough. All of these pastry recipes should be par baked, or blind baked, before adding fillings to ensure they are baked through. I made the mistake of not par baking this crust before filling it with eggs, cream, and veggies. Otherwise, no complaints, no notes.

Pâte Sablée - Tarte aux Pommes

This crust was the star of the three. Pâte Sablée is almost like a shortbread (in fact, there are cookies made of similar dough called sablées) and has a buttery, sandy texture. I chose to sub this dough in for a more traditional sweet pastry crust in Prue Leith’s Tarte aux Pommes recipe. This bake took me the better part of a day, but it was so delicious.

Note: This recipe calls for rolling out the dough into a thin, uniform layer. Other similar tart crusts I made for later bakes (see: Blueberry Cornmeal Tart, Lemon Tart) called for crumbling the dough and pressing it into the tart pan with your fingers. My assumption is that the technical recommendation is to roll out the dough and place it beautifully in the tart pan. As a home baker, I’ll be trying the crumble/press method next time to see if it yields a similar result.

Flaky Butter Pies

As part of my “curriculum” I wanted to include a savory, double crust meat pie and a flaky pastry, lattice fruit pie.

Chicken Pot Pie

For a meat pie I had a few options: a British style savory watercrust or a flaky, all butter American style pastry. I opted for the second and chose to make a double crust Chicken Pot Pie. The filling was a no-recipe mix of carrots, onion, celery, herbs, mushrooms, rotisserie chicken, broth and cream. For the pastry I used the all butter pie crust from Sally’s Baking Addiction.

Lattice Cherry Pie

I’d never made an All-American cherry pie OR a pie with a lattice top, so I knew I had to cover both if I was going to spend a month baking tarts and pies. I used Rose Levy Beranbaum’s recipe from the Baking Bible for Flaky Cream Cheese Butter Pie Crust and Sweetie Cherry Pie. After all of the other crusts I’ve made recently this seemed so easy! The filling is just fruit, sugar and cornstarch and making the lattice was as easy as braiding hair.

Other Tarts

Lemon Tart

Nicola Lamb (our lord and savior) has an extensive substack post about Lemon Tarts and I made her recipe which uses a pistachio crust. I do wish it had been a little sweeter, so next time I’ll add more sugar to my cream mixture and maybe add meringue to the top of the tart. But the perfectly set custard was so satisfying.

Blueberry Cornmeal Tart

This tart ROCKED. In terms of effort vs. reward this tart is the clear winner. It’s so simple to make, looks beautiful with the jammy fruit and crumble topping, and was a total crowd pleaser. Fourteen more of these, immediately. Recipe by Alison Roman.

Conclusion

I’m glad I now know what it takes to make a classic tart using French pastry. I’m also glad I know that there are quicker ways to make an impressive, delicious tart in a pinch. The tarts I KNOW I’ll make again: Alison Roman’s Blueberry Cornmeal Tart, Prue Leith’s Tarte aux Pommes and Claire Saffitz’s Simple Fruit Tart (in that order).

Next up…. Choux Pastry!