Buckwheat shortbread. This unassuming little cookie has become my favorite over the years. Nothing tricksy about it, just flours, sugar, butter, a little baking powder and salt. Extremely forgiving. The first time I made these I misunderstood Mary's cryptic jottings on the recipe (she's our home's main sweets baker), and combined the ingredients in totally the wrong order. They still came out great. Sablé means sandy in French, an apt description of the slightly gritty quality the buckwheat flour lends. These are rustic and somehow elegant at the same time, distinctive, but comfortingly familiar.
Buckwheat Sablés
makes about 6 dozen
8 ounces butter (2 sticks)
2/3 cup sugar
1 cup buckwheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large egg yolks
Preheat oven to 325. In a large mixing bowl, thoroughly mix the butter and sugar. In a separate bowl, combine the flours, baking powder, and salt. Add the flour mixture to the butter and sugar, mixing with your hands to incorporate. Form a well in the center and add the egg yolks, then mix them in with a fork until the texture is uniform, a bit like wet sand. Test the dough to see if it will come together by squeezing a little ball in your hand. If it's crumbly, mix in cold water a tablespoon at a time until it coheres.
Two ways to proceed from here: Roll out the dough 1/4 inch thick and cut out small fluted cookies (or another shape you like). Or divide the dough into four pieces and roll each into a log about one inch in diameter. Wrap these in plastic and refrigerate for at least 45 minutes. When the dough is cold, slice off 1/3-inch pieces.
In either case: Place the dough on non-stick or parchment-lined cookie sheets, and bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until lightly brown--the color or the buckwheat make it a little tough to tell, but they shouldn't need more than 20 minutes.
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p.s.~ I switched to the new blog editor, which seems to have solved the line break problem I was having--but I wonder why I can't seem to be able to add more than one photo at a time to the blog...?
Text and photos copyright 2011 by Brett Laidlaw
