# re frisage?



## marmalady (Apr 19, 2001)

For you pro chefs out there, question - I just recently learned about 'frisage' for pastry crusts, where you use the heel of your hand to blend the finished crust dough; tried it with a standard pate brisee crust, and it worked great, one of the best pie crusts I've ever done!

My question is, pie crust recipes tell you to handle the dough as little as possible after mixing all the ingredients, to avoid the 'tough crust' syndrome, but frisage really gets in there and beats up the dough - am I being dense and completely missing something here?


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## thebighat (Feb 21, 2001)

Were you making pie dough, or tart dough? Because there is a difference in how they are handled. In a flaky pie dough you want big chunks of fat because when you roll it out, that will sheet between the flour enclosing it and make the dough flaky. When you incorporate the flour and butter intimately using the frisage technique, you wind up with a "short" dough, which is crisp and crumbly.


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## eeyore (Nov 26, 2000)

Here is a good rule of thumb (And it is admittedly an oversimplification):

The more you mix fat with flour the more tender the final product will be.

The more you mix water with flour the tougher the final product will be.


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## mudbug (Dec 30, 1999)

marmalady,

It really depends on what kind of dough you are making and what the ingredients are. (what's your recipe?)

Usually when they say to handle your dough as little as possible, this refers to things like pie crusts (which people prefer to be flaky) and certain breads.

There is a lot involved in baking and different types of crusts.


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## marmalady (Apr 19, 2001)

Thanks for the clarification, guys - Was using Nick Malgieri's 'flaky pie crust' recipe; I had used the max amount of water he called for in the recipe, and the dough wasn't coming together at all, so I just decided to try the frisage - the crust did come out a lot 'shorter' than a regular pie crust, but it was still good! And cooked all the way through on the bottom! Pastry crusts are the Achilles heel of my baking experiences!:blush:


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## mudbug (Dec 30, 1999)

marmalady,

Is this the one?


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## isa (Apr 4, 2000)

Could you mean fraisage from the verb fraiser??


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