Why It Works
- White entire wheat flour provides an earthy, nutty taste whereas holding the dough tender.
- Incorporating cornstarch softens the proteins within the flour to supply a shortbread with a pleasantly crumbly texture.
- Evenly coating the flour particles with fats within the type of melted butter makes it more durable for gluten chains to type, leading to buttery shortbread that melts in your mouth.
About 150 miles north of Edinburgh is the village of Methlick, a small neighborhood of about 540 folks in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. There’s one primary street with a church, a faculty, an inn, and a tiny retailer—it’s the sort of place the place everybody greets one another by identify. Surrounded by farmland and rolling hills, the city is the place you’ll discover what’s unequivocally the very best shortbread on the earth. Every chunk is wealthy and buttery, with a young, crumbly texture that melts in your mouth. Throughout the highest is a beneficiant dusting of golden sugar that glints within the daylight, as if it had been inviting you to please take a chunk. You gained’t discover the shortbread in a café or a store. It’s solely obtainable within the kitchen of a feisty, charming 85-year-old girl named Evelyn Cook dinner, my husband’s grandmother. However fortunate me—and now fortunate you—I’ve the recipe for Evelyn’s magical shortbread and I’m sharing it right here.
It was the scent of this shortbread that greeted us once we stepped into her residence final March. I adopted the aroma to the kitchen, the place a freshly made batch, barely out of the oven, was cooling in its pan. I used to be ravenous after the lengthy drive up from Edinburgh and I eyed the shortbread greedily, eagerly ready for it to turn out to be cool sufficient to eat.
Severe Eats / Amanda Suarez
My first chunk tasted nearly as good because it smelled. Although I’d eaten shortbread many instances earlier than, I’d by no means had one which captured my consideration the way in which this one did. It was the platonic ideally suited of what shortbread must be: It wasn’t too candy and by some means managed to be each crisp and tender on the similar time. I detected slight nutty undertones from what was, I realized later, entire wheat flour. I not often ever style one thing so scrumptious that I really feel the necessity to recreate it at residence, however I used to be decided to depart with the shortbread recipe in hand.
Evelyn, who insists that her grandchildren name her Gaga, has been making shortbread for 50 years. Once I requested for the recipe, she rattled off an inventory of components and measurements with the sort of familiarity that solely comes from making the identical recipe for years and years, over and over, till it’s merely ingrained in your head. The recipe, she says, initially got here from my husband’s great-great aunt Mary, and it’s the one she’s made ever since.
Once I returned residence to New York, I used to be delighted to see an electronic mail from Gaga with the recipe. It’s a splendidly simple one that hardly requires greater than a bowl. All it’s important to do is whisk collectively the flour, sugar, cornstarch, and salt, pour an ungodly quantity of melted butter over it, and gently press to type a cohesive dough earlier than transferring it to a 9- by 13-inch baking sheet, smoothing it out, and baking till evenly golden. There’s no stand mixer concerned and no rolling and chilling mandatory. In different phrases, it’s the simplest shortbread ever—and it’s Scottish grandma authorized.
The Origins of Shortbread
Shortbread hails from Scotland. In keeping with meals historian Alan Davidson, editor of The Oxford Companion to Meals, the baked good could be traced again to sixteenth century Britain, when bakers made “brief muffins,” a wealthy pastry with eggs and leavened with yeast that finally developed into completely different sorts of biscuits loved all through the U.Okay. right this moment. “The unique Scottish shortbread is solely a thick layer of wealthy, sweetened shortcrust pastry, with none further flavorings,” he writes within the e book. “The basic proportions of components for a shortbread recipe are one half sugar to 2 of butter and three of flour,” which leads to the biscuit’s signature brief, crumbly texture.
Historically, bakers ready shortbread by urgent it right into a adorned picket mildew. Although it’s eaten year-round now, it has traditionally been related to Yuletide. Writing within the New York Times in 1977, Ann Barry notes that on New 12 months’s Day, early guests—known as “first-footers”—would deliver shortbread with them; the baked good was imagined to be stored entire till the night feast: ”If it remained entire, unbroken prosperity could be assured within the family for the following yr; if it crumbled earlier than then, hopes of excellent fortune had been dashed.”
At one level, shortbread additionally served as a marriage cake in rural Scotland. Florence Marian McNeill, creator of The Scots Kitchen, notes that the “mester-hoosal,” or the grasp of ceremonies, would smash “infar cake,” a shortened oatcake, over the bride’s head in her new residence as a sort of house-warming customized. At present, shortbread is eaten all through the UK and infrequently loved with a cup of tea.
Bakers—particularly Scots—have many robust emotions about what makes the very best shortbread. Some make their shortbread by creaming butter and sugar; some form the biscuits into particular person parts earlier than baking; some dock the dough earlier than baking to stop uneven rising. And a few, like Gaga, bake it in a big mildew and portion after. Shortbread is usually a very private factor. As Barry wrote within the New York Instances: “If one is lucky sufficient to pattern selfmade shortbread with a bunch of Scots, the matter of what’s and isn’t shortbread could, nonetheless, be open to heated debate.”
Butter Is Your Buddy for the Greatest Shortbread
With so few components, most of shortbread’s taste comes from the dairy you utilize. I like to recommend utilizing good high quality butter with a considerable quantity of butterfat. At 82 to 85% butterfat, European-style butter comprises extra fats than the 80% butterfat of most American butters. My private favourite is Kerrygold’s unsalted butter, which has 82% butterfat and comes from grass-fed cows. (As a result of pasture-raised cows eat a extra various weight loss plan, their milk is usually extra complex-tasting, and I like to make use of it in shortbread, the place the flavour of the butter actually shines by means of.) I’ve made this recipe with each European-style butter and American butter; whereas the model made with European-style butter is ever so barely richer, the shortbread with American butter was nonetheless glorious—and if all you might have entry to is American butter, you’ll nonetheless get excellent shortbread.
Many shortbread recipes begin by having you cream softened butter with sugar, incorporating the dough with what former Severe Eats editor Stella Parks describes as “micro pockets of air.” As a result of air is a poor conductor of warmth, “it helps insulate the dough from the recent baking sheet within the oven, slowing the speed at which the butter and sugar soften,” she notes. As cookies bake, the air pockets “start to swell with steam, a delicate upward draft that helps to carry the dough aloft. When the cookie lastly units, the air’s footprint kinds its crumb.”
Gaga’s methodology of utilizing melted butter, although, is less complicated—and foolproof. As former Severe Eats editor Kristina Razon wrote in her information to softening butter, the duty isn’t so simple as simply making butter pliable. “The precise temperature of your softened butter,” she says, “can affect how doughs and batters type and may have a make-or-break affect on the ultimate outcomes.” By utilizing melted butter, there’s no time spent questioning if the butter is the appropriate temperature or consistency. Even higher, there’s no faffing about with a stand or hand mixer.
Along with lending the biscuit its taste, butter additionally contributes to the confection’s “shortness,” the crumbly texture you’ll discover in sure tart doughs and cookies like shortbread. Utilizing loads of butter ensures that fats evenly coats all of the dry components, limiting the event of gluten and holding the biscuit tender. You’re not mistaken—there may be, certainly, a full pound of butter on this shortbread. But it surely’s completely mandatory for the wealthy texture that’s so quintessential to good shortbread.
Severe Eats / Amanda Suarez
Why You Ought to Use Entire Wheat Flour for Flavorful Shortbread
One other factor that distinguishes Gaga’s recipe from many others is its use of entire wheat flour along with common all-purpose flour or, within the U.Okay., plain flour. Entire wheat flours include each the bran and germ; as a result of they’ve flavorful oils, they usually have a extra nuanced taste than its all-purpose counterpart.
Within the U.S., most entire wheat flours come from crimson wheat; on this recipe, I go for entire wheat flour milled from white wheat.To be clear: white entire wheat flour doesn’t confer with the colour of the flour, however moderately the kind of wheat from which it’s made, which has the identical brownish shade and a equally rustic texture to different entire wheat flours. It has a barely decrease protein content material (about 12%) in comparison with commonplace entire wheat flour (about 13%), which helps preserve the shortbread tender whereas nonetheless bringing a refined earthiness. (Flours with the next protein content material are likely to develop extra gluten, which can lead to a more durable, chewier cookie.) In case you can’t discover white entire wheat flour, you should utilize a complete wheat constructed from crimson wheat—it’ll nonetheless be scrumptious, simply not fairly as “brief.
Combine in Some Cornstarch for the Tenderest Shortbread
Along with all-purpose flour and entire wheat flour, you’ll discover there’s a hefty quantity of cornstarch in Gaga’s recipe. Bakers typically add the ingredient to their baked items to “soften” the proteins within the flour, a course of meals science author Harold McGee describes as diluting the gluten proteins. “As a result of completely different flours haven’t solely completely different protein contents, however completely different protein qualities, it’s probably not doable to show all-purpose flour into pastry flour or vice versa,” he writes in his e book On Meals and Cooking. “Nonetheless, it’s doable to dilute the gluten proteins of a given flour by the addition of cornstarch or one other pure starch,” which inspires tenderness. It’s why many residence cooks mix all-purpose flour with cornstarch to approximate pastry flour once they don’t have any readily available.
Incorporating cornstarch into the shortbread dough is a straightforward solution to scale back the general gluten within the dough and, along with the hefty quantity of melted butter, produces extremely brief cookies that soften in your mouth. And it’s why I’m not afraid to knead the dough just a little—albeit gently!—to get it to return collectively or firmly press it into the pan. There are such a lot of safeguards in place to make sure that this shortbread will keep tender, it’s practically unimaginable to mess up, even in the event you’re a novice baker.
Observe that some bakers, together with Gaga, typically use rice flour rather than cornstarch of their shortbread for a extra brittle texture. I’ve tried it each methods, and whereas shortbread made with rice flour is scrumptious my husband and I each favor the model with cornstarch because it produces a softer crumb, whereas the model with rice flour is barely crispier.
Choosing the Sugar
Caster sugar is what the Brits name superfine sugar. It dissolves simply and has a sandy texture that’s finer than granulated sugar however coarser than icing sugar, making it an excellent in-between for baking and different confections. Gaga’s recipe initially known as for normal caster sugar, however right here, I’ve opted for golden caster sugar, which is unrefined and has a refined butterscotch observe. It’s a private choice, and common caster sugar or superfine sugar will work simply fantastic. You will discover golden caster sugar on-line, at British grocery shops, or specialty baking shops.
Making, Baking, and Shaping the Dough
Upon getting the easy components gathered collectively, there’s actually not a lot to creating this shortbread: You’ll whisk the dry components collectively in a big bowl, then pour melted butter over the dry components, then gently—however firmly—use your palms to knead till a cohesive dough kinds. You’ll then press the dough right into a rimmed baking sheet and clean it out till it’s an excellent layer earlier than popping it into the oven to bake.
Slicing and Serving the Shortbread
It’s best to chop the shortbread into parts within the pan whereas it’s nonetheless heat—in the event you wait till it’s cool, it’s prone to crumble aside. After you narrow the cookies, you’ll sprinkle the tops with extra caster sugar. Whereas not all recipes name for sprinkling sugar on the shortbread when it comes out of the oven, I—like Gaga—love the slight crunch it offers the cookies.
And now you’ve reached the toughest a part of the recipe: ready for the shortbread to chill for an agonizing hour. Sure, an hour! This time is required for the shortbread to chill and set. Within the meantime, you may benefit from the scent of cookies (or biscuits, in the event you’re from the U.Okay.) all through your private home. Baking a batch of this shortbread could not add a Gaga to your loved ones—or transport you to Scotland—but it surely’s about as shut as you will get.