French

These elegant cookies, found in nearly every pastry shop in Paris, have a crisp exterior and a slightly chewy center.

It’s best to bake these cookies on cool, dry days so they can form and retain a curved shape. Because they are fragile, first line airtight containers with several layers of paper towels, then lay tuiles on top, in one layer, without crowding.

If you wish to make these with store-bought puff pastry, increase the sugar to one cup. Thaw and unfold the dough on the sugared work surface, then trim each piece into a ten-inch square, about 1/8 inch thick. Proceed with the recipe, sprinkling and rolling as directed. (Standard packages contain about one pound of dough, so the yield will be slightly greater than for our homemade version.)

These shortbread-like cookies hail from Brittany, a region of France renowned for its delicious butter. Be sure not to underbake them or they will not be crisp enough. Scoring the lattice pattern on the top takes a bit of time, but it’s easy to do and the end result is well worth the effort.

Less puffy and showy, but just as delicious as Mrs. Rowe’s Meringue (opposite), this family recipe is a tougher breed. The salt and cornstarch fuse and stabilize it, making it easier to manage and giving it a harder glaze once it’s baked, which means less likelihood of weeping.

The texture of puff pastry comes from the way its essential ingredients—flour, butter, water, and salt—are combined. You begin by making two separate components. The first, the dough package, or détrempe in French, is mostly flour with just a bit of butter worked in (a combination of all-purpose and cake flour results in just enough protein to support the dough as it puffs). The second, the butter package, or bourrage (“filling”), is mostly butter, with a little flour worked in. The two packages are combined by repeatedly rolling and folding the dough, creating a total of 1,458 distinct layers. In the heat of the oven, the steam that is produced by the butter in the dough creates pockets of air and expands the many layers. Tarts made with a puff pastry base are among the simplest to assemble. The following recipe makes enough pastry for four large tarts (freeze unused pastry up to 3 months).

Pâte sucrée, or “sweet pastry,” is a sturdy dough, thanks to its proportion of sugar and the addition of egg yolks. It’s a good choice for tarts, which are most often unmolded before serving. It is also more tender than pâte brisée, breaking cleanly under a fork instead of shattering into flakes.

Pâte sablée is essentially a sugar-cookie dough used to produce a crumbly, sandy pastry crust. In fact, “sablée” comes from the French word for “sand.” Because the dough is very soft, it can be difficult to roll out; instead, press it gently into the pan. Any scraps of dough can be cut out and baked into cookies.

The rich flavor, delicate texture, and versatility of pâte brisée have made it the standard at Martha Stewart Living and in this book, where it is used for pies and tarts both sweet and savory. From three main components—flour, fat, and water—plus a little sugar and salt, you get a crust that is incomparably flaky, yet sturdy enough to contain nearly any filling. An all-butter pâte brisée tastes best, but some cooks use shortening or lard for additional tenderness. The name pâte brisée means “broken pastry,” and refers to cutting the butter into the flour, either by hand or with a food processor. The butter-flour mixture should resemble coarse meal, with some pieces of butter the size of small peas, before cold water is drizzled into it; these bits of unincorporated butter give pâte brisée its famously flaky texture by releasing steam as they melt.

Essentially a custard of eggs, cream, and savory fillings baked in a pastry crust, quiche is simple to prepare, and takes well to a variety of flavors. For example, you can follow the recipe below to prepare quiches with the suggested fillings—mushroom, bacon and caramelized onion, or leek and corn—or substitute any other ingredients you prefer. You can bake a quiche in a plain pie plate, but the sharper edges of a tart tin better support the crust’s sides. In addition, blind-baking the shell will prevent the crust from undercooking and getting soggy. A perfectly cooked quiche will be completely set (it shouldn’t jiggle in the center), slightly puffed, and lightly browned across the surface.

Inspired by the robust cooking of Alsace, a region in northeastern France bordering Germany, this flaky pie features a rich filling of potatoes, Comté (or Gruyère) cheese, leeks, and garlic-infused cream. Rather than adding the cream to the filling at the beginning, it is poured through the vents on top of the pie only after the pastry has turned golden brown, and then the pie is baked ten minutes more. This allows the crust to crisp properly and keeps the potatoes from soaking up all the cream before the pie has finished baking.

In classic French cooking, a large dessert shell made entirely of meringue is called a vacherin, so called for its resemblance to a well-known cheese; it is usually layered with whipped cream and fruit. Here, small-scale meringue shells are filled with lime curd, whose bright color is especially striking in contrast with the crisp white shells.

A French patisserie classic is made modern. The tarts pictured incorporate sliced kiwi fruit, peaches, and strawberries, along with assorted whole berries, but feel free to improvise with your favorite fresh or poached fruit, and to arrange it in whatever pattern pleases you. That’s half the fun of a recipe such as this—the shell serves as a blank canvas for your creativity.

Pear and almond tart is one of the best known—and most revered—desserts of classic French pastry; it’s also one of Martha’s favorites. Almonds are sprinkled over the top and flavor both the press-in crust and the frangipane filling. Halved pears, poached in white wine and vanilla, are nestled in neat rows, leaving just enough room in between for the filling to rise during baking and turn a splendid shade of golden brown.

Clafoutis, a rich, creamy custard dessert from the French countryside, is made from a quickly blended batter that is usually poured over fruit and baked. Cherries are the traditional choice, but other stone fruits, such as sliced apricots and plums, as well as berries and figs, are good options. Here, clafoutis makes an unexpected—and utterly delectable—filling for individual tarts.

Crème brûlée—a French restaurant favorite whose name means “burned cream”—is delicious all on its own, but even more so when baked in a crisp tart shell. A kitchen torch is used to caramelize the sugar on the surface of the custard, producing spectacular color and crackle. If you don’t have a kitchen torch, use the broiler: chill the tarts for half an hour, then broil them for about a minute. For the best results, prepare the tarts no more than one day in advance, and wait to brûlée them until just before serving. This way, the shells will remain firm and crumbly, and the topping will retain its trademark sheen.

Small puff-pastry squares make great vessels for summer fruits steeped in honey and fresh lime juice. The technique for making the shells is similar to that used to create the French pastries known as vol-au-vents (or “flying in the wind,” so called for their ethereal texture). Vol-au-vents are traditionally filled with savory fillings and served as a first course. Here, plums and strawberries fill the pastries for the last course; feel free to substitute other fresh berries or stone fruits, and to garnish each with a tiny dollop of whipped cream, if you wish.

Cherries and almonds go hand in hand in many traditional baked goods. To produce this flat tart, lightly sweetened and spiced Bing cherries and ground almonds are heaped onto a rough oval of pâte sucrée; the edges of the pastry are then folded over and pleated to form a border, then the whole thing is baked to a gloriously glossy sheen.