There's nothing like biting into a buttery slice of shortbread fresh out of the oven, whether you've made a classic Scottish shortbread, a flavored variety, or something a bit more unique. However, to get those results, you've first got to mix your dough, which can sometimes be a bit more challenging than you might think.
Shortbread typically contains just a few ingredients — flour, sugar, butter, and salt. With no extra liquid, it sometimes might be tough to get your dough to a smooth consistency and you can wind up with dry and crumbly dough instead.
If you're facing this issue, Ina Garten offers a tip on her blog, Barefoot Contessa, that might just solve your worries: "If the shortbread dough feels dry, I add a teaspoon or two of water until it's easier to work with." The extra moisture can help to bring the dough together and give it a smoother texture.
As Ina Garten explains, "Different butters have different water content, and some can be drier than others." Butter contains between 16 and 18% water, and that water content is partly what's responsible for hydrating the flour, allowing for it to cook. It also helps to hold your shortbread cookie dough together.
You don't have to stick to just water to hydrate the dough, however. You can also use a bit of milk, vanilla extract, or even eggs to help get your dough back to the right consistency. Just remember that other ingredients can also wind up affecting the flavor of your cookies. Water's neutral taste makes it a good pick for keeping harmony between the different tastes in your biscuits while still adding in some necessary moisture.
Whichever choice you go with, remember that you should start with just a little and slowly add more as your dough needs it. This prevents you from overcorrecting and winding up with a gooey dough.
Figure In More Fat
While Ina Garten adds a bit of water to solve the crumbly shortbread conundrum, that's not the only solution to try. Sometimes, dry shortbread occurs because you don't have enough fat in your dough. Fat, and namely butter, helps to retain moisture and give the dough its consistency. If that's the case, you'll need to add some back in.
A bit of vegetable oil can work here, or if you've used a butter shortbread recipe and don't want to combine fats, some melted butter can also do the trick. Not only does this introduce more fat, but it also incorporates it as a liquid, helping bind together the dough.
Just like with adding water, a little can go a long way. Start with a teaspoon of fat and mix your dough well. If the dough is still falling apart, you can keep adding more in small increments. And at the end of the day, you can always add a little bit of water as well if your shortbread still hasn't formed a cohesive dough.
This is a common problem with recipes that use all-purpose flour. To fix this, you can add more fat to the dough. This can be in the form of butter, shortening, or even olive oil. Just add a little at a time until the dough comes together and is no longer crumbly.
To avoid this, try using as little flour as possible while preparing to roll your dough. Dry – “Dry” or “Crumbly” dough is a product of over-mixing or using too much of any ingredient during the mixing process. This can be reversed by adding one to two tablespoons of liquid (water, milk or softened butter) to your mix.
The most common mistakes when making shortbread are over-working the dough, and incorporating too much flour. The less you work the dough, the more crumbly and melt-in-your-mouth your shortbread cookies will be.
It's important to avoid over-mixing shortbread dough, which will develop gluten and make the finished product tough, not tender. To make sure that the flour mixes completely with little effort, sift the flour first to get out all of the lumps.
Too much flour and not enough water can cause crumbly bread – people often do this if the dough is too sticky and they add more flour rather than kneading through it. Other culprits can be overproving or not kneading enough – the things you need to do to get a good structure.
This contributes to the fact that melted butter spreads cookies more quickly than butter that is solid at room temperature. The ratio of liquid to solid ingredients in your cookie dough is immediately increased when you melt the butter and make it into a liquid rather than a solid ingredient.
Creating little holes in the top of the shortbread helps any moisture escape from the dough so it cooks more evenly, this also helps create the very 'short' texture of the biscuits. In baking terms, 'short' means crumbly with a melt-in-the-mouth texture.
A bit of vegetable oil can work here, or if you've used a butter shortbread recipe and don't want to combine fats, some melted butter can also do the trick. Not only does this introduce more fat, but it also incorporates it as a liquid, helping bind together the dough.
If you find your shortbread is hard to bring together and starts to crumble instead of forming a dough, it may have to do with your butter. On the Barefoot Contessa website, Garten notes that different butters have different "water content," so they may not all hold together in the same manner.
Too much butter — which binds everything together — and you end up with a cookie spread entirely too thin. The proteins in the butter combined with the sugar kick start the Maillard reaction, so an overabundance can also make the cookie too brown.
When cookie dough is too wet, your cookies may come out too thin and crispy, too dense, or just plain bad. However, this problem is easily fixed if you know how. To fix a cookie dough that's too wet, add in some more flour one tablespoon at a time.
Yes, cornstarch can help absorb excess moisture in the dough and make it less sticky. Sprinkle a small amount of cornstarch on your hands or work surface before handling the dough. Alternatively, add a tablespoon or two of cornstarch to the dough while mixing.
My cookies were underdone after a bake of 7 minutes. To save these cookies, I let them completely cool first. Then continue baking them at 180 degrees C for 5 minutes. After which, turn off the oven, and again leave them in and let the trapped heat continue cooking them.
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