Almond shortbread with atta flour

Recently, I found atta flour in sale in an international grocery store. It's the type of flour used to make Indian naan. I did some research on the Golden Temple atta flour (made in Canada), and found out that it is considered the most popular brand of Indian flour in this continent. It is made of bleached wheat flour and bran.  So I bought some to try out. What I found out is that this atta flour does not have high gluten. I think the bran further shortens the gluten formation. Since naan does not need to rise, it probably doesn't matter so much. I thought it may be a good idea to try out this flour on shortbread. In order to have some reasonable reference point, I try out my favorite shortbread recipe using atta flour.

Recipe: Almond shortbread with atta flour (make 16 small pieces)

Ingredients:

- 2/3 cup Golden Temple atta flour

- 1/3 cup almond meal

- 2 TB cornstarch

- 1/2 tp table salt

- 6 TB butter

- 2+1/2 TB honey powder

- a few raw almonds, soaked and sliced

Procedure:

1. Mix flour, almond meal, cornstarch and salt in a medium bowl.

2. Chop butter into small pieces. Then mix in the honey powder. Use a fork to mix the two together while flaking the butter, until it forms a smooth thick paste. 

3. Add the softened butter by spoonful into the flour mixture and use hand to mix them together until they are just incorporated to form one ball of dough. 

4. Make small 1" balls out of the dough. Press each down into a mini-tart mold.

5. Place a slice of soaked almond on each piece of dough, pressing it down.

6. Preheat oven to 300F. Place the tart tray in the oven and bake at 300F (or slightly lower temperature such as 275F) for 20-25 minutes, until the top is lightly brown.

Results:

9:24pm, mixture of atta flour, almond meal and salt:

9:25pm, butter softened with honey powder:

9:33pm, dough just done:

9:34pm, dough showing a crack when pressed:

9:43pm, dough's texture when cut; observe the flaky layers:

9:46pm, dough balls:

9:49pm, dough balls topped with almonds:

10:23pm, shortbread baked about 20-25 minutes:

10:25pm, shortbread's top and bottom:

10:25pm, shortbread's interior:

Observations:

It seems that the dough made from atta flour may need more butter to glue together. The resultant shortbread is rather flaky and dry. It falls apart more easily than when I use King Arthur flour. I think the gluten makes some difference.