She Wolf Bakery's Chestnut Shortbread
By Sarah Vitale of She Wolf Bakery
Our friends at She Wolf have been doing some experimenting with chestnut flour, and these shortbreads are one of the results. We sold these at markets this fall and people were raving about them, so Sarah generously shared this recipe for you all to make them at home. These are simple, buttery shortbreads with a special boost of texture and flavor from coarse chestnut flour. This is 3:1 all purpose flour to coarse chestnut flour ratio, so a great way to use up the last little bit of coarse flour in your freezer. (100% chestnut flour shortbreads are in the works & coming soon.)
From Sarah:
“This recipe yields 1kg of dough. We roll it out and cut it with cookie cutters, but it also does very well as a slice and bake, at a variety of thicknesses. It's just an all around adaptable and resilient cookie dough that can be used in a ton of different ways and you can add all kinds of stuff to it or dip them in chocolate, or sandwich them with dulce de leche for alfajores, which is what we do with them here.”
The number of cookies yielded will depend on what thickness you roll your dough out to, and what shapes/sizes of cookie you decide to make. I used a small biscuit cutter and a cup for testing and made 50 cookies. The dough freezes well. You can also halve this recipe if you want less.
Ingredients
342 g butter (about 3 sticks)
196 g sugar (about 2 cups)
361 g all purpose flour (about 3 cups)
94 g coarse chestnut flour (scant cup)
8 g fine sea salt
Steps
Preheat oven to 350°F and (depending on how many cookies you are baking, line 2 large baking sheets with parchment, baking mats, etc).
Sift together the dry ingredients.
Butter should be tempered to pliable but not too soft and not at all melty. Using the paddle attachment of a stand mixer, or a heavy wooden spoon to mix by hand, beat the butter to soften it further until it is smooth and creamy.
Add the sugar and beat them together until they are incorporated and creamy, but don't beat too much air into it.
Add the dry ingredients gently, mixing only to incorporation, do not overmix.
Sprinkle some flour on your rolling surface and roll the dough out to 1/4" and use cookie cutters, or roll into a cylinder to chill and slice.
Bake at 350°F. **The cooking time will be quite variable based on your oven and how thick you rolled your dough, but start checking them around 5-7 minutes. They are done when they just start to get some color on them. Trust your judgment! (For ex: She Wolf bakes 1/4” thick cookies in their commercial oven for 4-5 minutes but it took my home oven more like 12-14 minutes for that same size.)
The cookies will be fragile when they first come out of the oven. Wait until they’ve cooled a bit to transfer to a cooling rack.
These cookies store very well in an airtight container at room temperature. You can also refrigerate the dough for a few days or freeze it for several weeks.