Shortcrust Pastry

What a disaster! The dough was already too moist when I had mixed flour and butter (though I substituted half of the butter for lard - I don't believe that that was part of the problem as it is often done like that), It was far too moist after I had added the egg. I had to add some extra flour because I wouldn't have managed to get the mixture off my fingers and into the bowl. But even then the dough was too moist to roll it out thinly. Perhaps we should have prebaked the pastry before filling it - sometimes I do, sometimes I don't; either way it's normally fine. It wasn't this time. The pastry was uncooked, even after we had returned it to the oven for an extra 40 min, the crust was crumbly and fell apart, and the whole thing just tasted dry.

I must admit that I made at least one mistake - my butter wasn't cold as I had left it outside during the day. Nevertheless - I compared this recipe with other recipes for shortcrust pastry, and the proportions were just so different - while this recipe gave 1 part butter for 1.5 parts flour, others gave 1 part butter for 2 or even 2.5 parts flour.* That was the crucial point when it all went wrong.

(*) A recipe for sweet shortcrust pastry will usually contain butter and flour in a 1:1.5 ratio - 300g flour, 200g butter and 100g sugar. The crucial thing, I believe, is first the addition of the (dry) sugar, and second the omittance of the (wet) egg.