Saint Tropez Tart: Big & Small

You can find this butter-rich brioche dough, rolled into a free-form round, washed with egg and speckled with pearl sugar in every pasty shop in Saint-Tropez. It has a distinctive look that’s eye catching. Several years ago, I baked my first iconic Saint Tropez tart from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking Chez Moi. By and large, my favorite brioche dough is still the one using a natural leaven. However, from time to time, it seems right to provide equal opportunities to the yeast version of the dough, which this one is.

The recipe comes from David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen. It makes a big 9-inch tart, just right for parties. Without a party in sight, I decide to make a full and small Trop — for fun. Also, the idea is to see whether I like a smaller tart as much as the full-size one.

One thing I know from working with the brioche dough is how well it freezes. Once the dough is at hand, it’s easy to transform it into variations of tart, pizza, pan loaf or roll. So, I’d never object to have some extra brioche dough around.

What surprises me about this recipe is the amount of butter in the dough. In this case, 140 grams of butter to 245 grams of all-purpose flour. That translates into 57% of total flour weight. That’s a lot! In fact, the range in my goto brioche dough is 30-40%. Therefore, I have to double-check that I’m reading the recipe correctly.

After preparing the pastry cream, I have serious doubt about making the buttercream to be incorporated in the cream filling. I have to say no to adding another 6 tablespoons (85 grams) of butter to the already butter-rich tart. Instead, I make an Italian meringue. (By the way, it’s putting the leftover of 3 egg whites from the pastry cream to good use.) Combining the meringue (1 part) with the pastry cream (3 parts), that becomes a light and creamy Chiboust cream to go between the brioche splits. Makes perfect sense to me!

The high-rising dough and the resulting open crumb structure is what I like most about David Lebovitz’s brioche recipe. The initial mixing at medium-high speed for about 10 minutes allows the dough to develop strong gluten network. Moreover, after adding the butter cubes to the dough, the recipe calls for another 5 minutes of heavy beating in the stand mixer. In the end, it becomes a tightly-bound, smooth and silky ball of dough. Many rises and rests later, it turns into a beautiful and compliant mass ready to make into the long-awaited Saint Tropez Tart. Either small or large, it’s equally appealing.