I'm a fan of Trader Joe's cultured butter. It's imported from Brittany but reasonably priced, and it's terrific on a toasted bagel or English muffin. Of course, it's also great for baking projects -- and could there be a more fitting project for butter from Brittany than a Sablé Breton? I decided to use a recipe from David Lebovitz that he lightly adapted from Little Flower Baking (a cookbook that I own, but that I'm pretty sure I've never used).
To make the cookie dough, you cream room temperature salted butter with flaky sea salt (I used Maldon); add in a mixture of egg yolks that have been whisked with sugar; and incorporate flour and baking powder. I chilled the dough before rolling it out to a thickness of a quarter inch and cutting the dough into 2-inch cookies. I re-rolled the scraps and got 36 cookies from a batch of dough. I placed the cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet, chilled them until firm, brushed them with egg wash, used a fork to draw a cross-hatch pattern on top of each cookie, and put them in the oven to bake.
The shiny tops of these cookies reminded me a lot of the almond cookies you often see in Asian bakeries. The cross-hatch pattern became less distinct after baking, but I liked the way the cookies looked. And I loved the way they tasted. They were very buttery and aggressively salty, right on the verge of crossing into the territory of being too salty. The cookies were also light and crisp; the texture was not sandy as I would normally expect from a sablé, but I liked it. These sablés were just lovely.
Recipe: "Sables Bretons: French Salted Butter Cookies," from David Lebovitz, adapted from Little Flower Baking by Christine Moore.
Previous Post: "More Svelte and Still Satisfying: Sablés Bretons," July 27, 2016.
To make the cookie dough, you cream room temperature salted butter with flaky sea salt (I used Maldon); add in a mixture of egg yolks that have been whisked with sugar; and incorporate flour and baking powder. I chilled the dough before rolling it out to a thickness of a quarter inch and cutting the dough into 2-inch cookies. I re-rolled the scraps and got 36 cookies from a batch of dough. I placed the cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet, chilled them until firm, brushed them with egg wash, used a fork to draw a cross-hatch pattern on top of each cookie, and put them in the oven to bake.
Recipe: "Sables Bretons: French Salted Butter Cookies," from David Lebovitz, adapted from Little Flower Baking by Christine Moore.
Previous Post: "More Svelte and Still Satisfying: Sablés Bretons," July 27, 2016.
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