Shrinking pastry

This time I'll try a recipe for sablee pastry; creaming butter and sugar together instead of using cold butter.

Do you rest the pastry before baking? That’s supposed to help stop shrinkage.

Did you let the pastry cool and rest
before lining the tins?
I always leave them a little too big and trim after they come out of the oven.

Ah, that's a good idea, Witzend and Ginny. I admit to being impatient and pop them in the oven right away.
I think I used a bit too much water in the pastry the first time as well.

You won’t get good results unless you rest the pastry in the fridge for 30 mins.

Trim them after baking. Are you using greaseproof and baking beans?

Too much liquid and not resting? Not that my views should be taken seriously. I can bake decent cakes but always produce awful pastry.

Sounds like either over-rolling (and stretching) or not resting in the fridge long enough - or both.

So my second batch was much better, but these ones were crumbly and difficult to roll. I think too much flour.

Next time, I will use the pate sablee recipe, but cut the flour a bit.

And thank you; I think too much water and not letting pastry rest after rolling was the original reason my pastry turned out bad.

As regards water. I use exactly one 15 mil spoon of cold water per 2 oz/50g of flour.
This, after too many years of following the instructions in my ancient GH cookery book, that specified one (5 mil) spoon per ounce of flour.
I could never roll it out for e.g. a plate or flan dish, without it breaking.
Now it never does.