Sablé dough

Sablé dough, or pâte sablée, is a French sweet pastry. A pastry encyclopedia describes pâte sablée as very rich and similar to cookie dough. The name comes from the French word for sand, which describes its short, crumbly, sandy texture.

A French pastry course describes it as a rich biscuit-like crust that is sweeter than pâte sucrée, and says it can be used for flans and tarts or for plain dessert biscuits. Its main ingredients are butter, icing sugar, egg and flour, with plenty of butter relative to the flour.

Because of the high fat and sugar, the dough bakes into a fine, tender, buttery crust that melts in the mouth. It is usually chilled before rolling because it is soft, and it is often baked blind before being filled with cream or fruit.