Sift the flour and arrange a mound on a work surface, stand in the center of the eggs, sugar, vanilla, lemon zest and butter softened, but be careful...not melted.., and should not be too heated, this would cause an increasing of the elasticity  with consequently loss of crispness, to soften the butter we recommend to knead it alone with your hands wet.

Mix all the ingredients fairly quickly using the method of fraisage, you should obtain a homogeneous mixture, not elastic.

The method of fraisage (a technique very well illustrated by the great French chef Escoffier) consists in working very quickly the various ingredients, breaking the dough under your palms in small portions pushing them ahead.

In practice, once formed a homogeneous mixture first, on a well floured pastry board roll it away from you (about 10-15 cm) with the wrist in a such way that you squeeze a portion of the dough on the pastry board (see photo).

Once you have obtained  the dough, wrap it up in plastic wrap and let it rest for about half an hour in the fridge, this also will contribute to the friability of the dough.

It is really a very old recipe, a similar mixture was already known in Venice during the eleventh century, when people began to use sugar imported from Egypt and Syria. But it was only in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries that the preparation of the pastry was perfected to the point of being transcribed on the first cookbooks.

Energy: 38427.0 kJ
Energy: 9160.2 kcal
Total Protein: 138.8 g
Animal protein: 28.8 g
Vegetable protein: 110.0 g
Total lipids: 454.3 g
Lipids animals: 447.3 g
Vegetable fat: 7.0 g
Cholesterol: 2613.3 mg
Carbohydrates available: 1199.9 g
Starch: 763.0 g
Soluble Carbohydrates: 436.9 g
Total dietary fiber: 25.0 g
Alcohol: 0.0 g
Water: 336.1 g