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1
Drop the flours, salt, and butter in to the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade.
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2
Pulse 5 or 6 times in 1/2-second bursts to break up the butter.
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3
Then add the shortening, turn on the machine, and immediately pour in the ice water, pulsing 2 or 3 times.
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4
Remove cover and observe the dough, which will look like a mass of smallish lumps and should just hold in a mass when a handful is pressed together.
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5
If too dry, pulse in droplets more water.
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6
Turn dough out onto your work surface, and with the heel of your hand rapidly and roughly push egg-size blobs out in front of you in 6-inch smears.
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7
Gather the dough into a relatively smooth cake; wrap in plastic, and refrigerate at least 2 hours (or up to 2 days), or you may freeze it for several months.
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8
SWEET DOUGH FOR DESSERT TARTS.
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9
Use the same formula, but cut the salt down to 1/4 teaspoon and include 2 tablespoons sugar.
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10
Dough with a high fat content like this one softens quickly at room temperature and becomes difficult if not impossible to work with.
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11
Whenever this happens to you, stop where you are and refrigerate it for 20 minutes.
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12
To make things easier for me, I bought a marble slab that now lives in the refrigerator; I take out that chilled slab and use it as a work surface any time Im doing a dough.
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13
Bake your tart shell in a bottomless buttered flan ring set on a buttered pastry sheet, or in a false-bottomed cake pan or fluted pan, or on a buttered upside-down pie plate or cake pan.
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14
Or you can fashion a free-form shell on a buttered pastry sheet.
