Recipe: The Essential Sifted Red Spring Pastry Dough from Vancouver’s Flourist

Every pastry chef has their go-to dough, and this one comes from Flourist‘s Janna Bishop and Shira McDermott. Use it to your heart’s content (if you need some inspiration, try it on the vanilla peach pie pictured above—get the recipe here).

Ingredients

2 ⅔ cups sifted red spring wheat flour

1 tsp sea salt

1 cup plus 2 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

½ cup ice cold water, or as needed

Make It

Combine sifted flour and salt in a large metal mixing bowl and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Mix vinegar and water and keep chilled.

Add cubed butter to flour and toss lightly with your hands to coat. Use a pastry blender to cut butter into the flour until it resembles very coarse meal. Butter pieces should vary in size, ranging from a pea to a nickel, with each piece of butter coated in flour.

A tablespoon at a time, drizzle vinegar-water mixture along the side of the bowl, allowing it to trickle toward the flour mixture. Use your hand or a fork to flick the flour mixture toward the centre of the bowl, rotating the bowl as you go. Repeat until you have added a total of 7 tbsp of liquid. The flour mixture should start forming larger clusters.

Once you have mixed in 7 tbsp, take a handful of the flour mixture in your hands and squeeze gently. If it easily holds together without falling apart, enough liquid has been added. If it easily breaks apart, continue adding 1 tbsp of liquid at a time, checking the consistency after each addition until the dough just holds together. Add liquid sparingly.

Divide in half and form into two discs. Wrap individually with plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour or, preferably, overnight.

This dough can be stored the fridge for up to 5 days. Freeze it if you plan to keep it for longer than that. Defrost on the counter prior to use, then use as directed based on your recipe.

USE THIS DOUGH: 5 Amazing Summer Baking Recipes from Vancouver’s Flourist