Tatin tart
Apple halves baked on a dry caramel, pressed flat and capped with rough puff pastry. The tarts are frozen before unmolding, so they come out of the pan in one piece.
- Makes
- 2 tarts (18 cm)
- Total
- 1,007 g, plus the apples
- Butter
- 80% of the flour
- Layers
- 243 of butter, on paper
The layers
Rough puff is the quick way to puff pastry: the butter goes into the dough in pieces instead of one block, then the dough is rolled and folded.
The cold dry butter goes into the dough in pieces and is only briefly mixed, so it stays in lumps.
Each time the dough is rolled, the lumps flatten into streaks, and each letter fold stacks them. Five folds, with 10 minutes in the refrigerator before each.
On paper that makes 243 layers of butter. Because the butter started as lumps, the real layers are patchier and less even.
Steam from the water in the dough and the butter lifts the layers apart. Rough puff rises less, and less evenly, than classic puff.
Why dry butter
- Butter in the USAt least 80% fat by law, about 17% water
- Dry butter for the layersAbout 84% fat, 14% water. 200 g here
Dry butter (beurre sec) has less water. It stays firm yet pliable when cold, so it rolls into one thin sheet instead of cracking or smearing into the dough, and it does not soften the dough it touches. In the US, use a European-style butter at 82% or more, or 84% laminating butter from a bakery supplier.
Rough puff pastry
| Ingredient | Grams | Baker’s % |
|---|---|---|
| 250 g | 100% | |
| 5 g | 2% | |
| 125 g | 50% | |
| 2 g | 0.8% | |
| 200 g | 80% | |
| Total | 582 g |
- Dissolve the salt and white vinegar in the water.
- Add the flour and the cold dry butter and mix briefly with the dough hook.
- Roll the dough into a rectangle and refrigerate 10 minutes.
- Give it a single (letter) fold and refrigerate 10 minutes.
- Repeat until you have given 5 single folds in all, then keep the dough refrigerated.
- Roll it 2 mm thick, prick it well and cut 2 disks 20 cm across.
Caramel
| Ingredient | Grams | |
|---|---|---|
| 150 g | ||
| 75 g | ||
| Total | 225 g |
- Cook the sugar dry to a caramel, then stop the cooking by adding the butter.
- Pour it straight away into cake pans lined with parchment paper.
Apple filling
| Ingredient | Grams | |
|---|---|---|
| 16 | ||
| Total | 0 g |
- Peel the apples, halve them from top to bottom and remove the cores.
- Arrange 15 to 16 apple halves in each pan, on the caramel.
- Bake 35 minutes at 170 °C (350 °F).
- Take the pans out, press the apples flat and let them cool.
- Lay a puff pastry disk over the apples in each pan.
- Bake 25 minutes at 170 °C (350 °F).
- Freeze the tarts.
Finishing
| Ingredient | Grams | |
|---|---|---|
| 200 g | ||
| Total | 200 g |
- Unmold the frozen tarts, warming the pans with a kitchen torch.
- Brush the tarts with the hot glaze.
For bakers in the US
- All-purpose flour (T65)
- French type 65 flour; in the US, an unbleached all-purpose flour
- Laminating butter (84% fat)
- Laminating or sheet butter, about 84% fat
- Neutral glaze, for hot use
- Nappage neutre à chaud: a clear glaze heated before use
