Brown Sugar Whole Wheat Shortbread, An Ode to Bristol
aka: trying to recreate the best shortbread ever
Hello friends, happy Sunday! I hope this post finds you well rested and Sunday-ing it up to the very best of your ability. I’m dropping into your weekend for just the briefest of moments to share a new recipe with you: Brown Sugar Whole Wheat Shortbread. As you might remember, Husband and I spent a speedy weekend in Bristol a few months back and had the very best time. We explored, recharged our batteries, and spent the large majority of our visit eating our way around the city — which is how we stumbled across the shortbread that has lived rent-free in my head since that first buttery morsel passed my lips.
Can I tell you about it?
See, about 5-minutes after arriving into Bristol city, we ambled through the door of Hart’s Bakery, a buzzy little spot that I’d read about online. It was mind-bogglingly busy for how out of the way it was, but we managed to secure a fresh-from-the-oven sausage roll and a fancy walnut + salted caramel millionaire’s shortbread; both of which left us sufficiently impressed. However! It was on our second visit that we discovered the pièce de résistance: their shortbread. Stacked high in a Jenga-like tower, said shortbread was thickly cut and lightly sparkling under a liberal dousing of white sugar. Stupidly, we only got one to share — but after devouring it in 0.5 seconds, we were straight back into the queue to secure a couple more for the journey home.
I knew pretty much instantly that I’d have to try recreate the shortbread to share here, and after several attempts, I finally feel like I’ve been somewhat successful! See, the thing is, their shortbread is totally different than any I've ever tasted before. It was earthy and slightly chewy, with a fantastically oat-y texture, and a lovely warm buttery flavour. During my recipe development deep dive, I found this old post on the Hart’s Bakery Instagram sharing that they put brown sugar and whole grain flour in their shortbread, which explains the depth of flavour and crumbly earthy texture.
I’ve really tried to capture the essence of the shortbread we loved so much in Bristol, and I’m pretty happy with the final result! They’re chewy yet crumbly, buttery without being greasy, sweet without being sickeningly so, and, best of all, ridiculously easy to make. I hope you love them, friends!
Happy baking! xo
brown sugar whole wheat shortbread
prep: 10-minutes
cook: 40-minutes
total: 1-hour 30-minutes
yield: eight generous slices
ingredients
150g plain flour
70g wholemeal flour1
20g wheat bran
200g salted butter, at room temp
110g light brown sugar
granulated sugar, for finishing
directions
1. Preheat oven to 180ºC. Prepare an 8-inch square baking tin by lining it completely with baking parchment.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours and wheat bran. Using a wooden spoon, add the butter + sugar to the bowl and cream together until smooth.
3. Empty the dough into the prepared tin and press it evenly across the base. I used an offset spatula to smooth my dough out, but the back of a regular spoon would work just as well!
4. Place the tin into the oven and bake for 20-minutes, or until the edges are starting to brown.
5. Remove the tin from the oven and use a sharp knife to score the shortbread into 8 generous sized pieces2. Return the tin to the oven and cook for another 20-minutes, or until the shortbread is a deep golden brown all over.
6. Remove the tin from the oven. Using the pre-scored marks as your guide, slice the shortbread into 8-pieces and sprinkle generously with granulated sugar. Transfer the tin to a wire rack and leave to cool completely before removing the shortbread. Once cooled, enjoy with a nice cuppa!
Hart’s Bakery use whole grain heritage wheat flour in their recipe, but I couldn’t find anything similar. According to the internet, wholemeal flour is slightly more milled/ground than whole grain, hence why I decided to add wheat bran into the equation. If you have whole grain flour and it’s pretty coarse in texture, you’d probably be fine to forego the wheat bran and still come out with the same crumbly result. However! Seeing as I haven’t actually tested this theory, you’re on your own.
The shortbread we devoured at Hart’s didn’t have those traditional little dock-ing marks on top, so I excluded that from this recipe — but this would be where to dock if you were so inclined!
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