The “short” of shortbread cookies refers not to height but to texture, as in tender and crumbly. This melt-in-your-mouth experience is thanks to the high butterfat content in the dough, which coats the flour and inhibits gluten formation by keeping the gluten strands short instead of long.
With so few ingredients, the flavor of butter really shines through in shortbread. Now is the moment to bake with the expensive butter—the slight tang and pleasant funk of cultured butter adds complexity to shortbread. Also adding intrigue here are ground oats, in a nod to an ingredient commonly used in Scottish-style shortbread. I grind my own oats instead of using oat flour because it gives the shortbread a more toothsome and nubbly texture that I prefer. If you don’t have a food processor or blender, use an equal weight of store-bought oat flour. — Anna Stockwell, The Butter Book, Chronicle Books 2026
