Pie II Crust Revisited

Pie. Pie. Pie. Pie.

Pie. Simple, straightforward, comforting, family, picnics, swimming, bee stings, water fights, 4th of July, Blue Ribbons, County Fair, stains, flaky crust, Grandma's recipe, a la mode, treat.

What resides between bottom and top crusts? Berries, peaches, apples, cherries, pumpkin, rhubarb, mincemeat, custard, pecans, and Blackbirds.

Strangely the night before I left for the East Coast I made pies. Nectarine, Santa Rosa plum and boysenberry with a dash of rose geranium leaves and flowers. A normal person wouldn't have so much fruit in their house before they are about to leave on a trip. A reasonable person would leave the day to clean the house, pack and eat up what's left in the fridge.

Suffice to say this pastry chef is neither sane nor reasonable when it comes to summer. The Saturday before I left I made it to two farmer's markets. I HAD to buy the Santa Rosa's. And the nectarines lept into my hands with their bespeckled selves. After forcing someone to buy a flat of boysenberries, he unloaded a few baskets on my guilty self.

The recipe you ask? I use my favorite pie crust recipe from the Baker's Dozen Cookbook. Unlike most all recipes, this dough does not need to rest, so you can use it right away! No one enjoys rolling out cold, brittle dough, so go ahead and bring this recipe into your home, add it to your repertoire.

My Kitchen-Aid can handle a batch that makes 4 circles of dough and it could probably handle making 5 but I rarely make a topless pie. I love dough, so I figure the more the better. I don't believe in shortening. I've never trusted it. Even when it was considered safe like cigarettes, the IUD and DDT. No matter how flaky it supposedly makes biscuits and pie crusts, I loathe the roof of my mouth being coated with the thin layer of plasticky substance that never seems to melt or digest.

Here are some hints for taking the scare out of pie dough making:

Your kitchen should be cool or room temperature but not hot. In summer try to make your dough in the early morning or at night. Use good butter. The less expensive your butter, the less butterfat and the more water it will have. Even if you do everything right, if you are not using quality ingredients, your dough will say this. Clear the kitchen of clutter. Your work and rolling surface should be clean, dry and spacious. I use a very large, free-standing, heavy butcher-block cutting board. It's so thick it will not move once I set it down.

Freeze your pie plates before you start. If, after you cube your butter, it begins to melt or soften, lay it out on a plate and freeze it until it is completely frozen. Start your ice water at least 10 minutes before you need it. This will insure that it is actually ice water, not just cold water with ice melting in it. Take your watch and rings off, pull your hair back if you have it. Have a clean, completely dry pastry brush nearby.

As you are streaming your ice water into your flour and butter mixture, pay very close attention. Watch its every move. Do not answer the phone or daydream. You do not want the dough to "come together into a ball" in the mixer! No. You want it to barely bind. When it is barely bound, stop the mixer immediately and turn it our onto your completely dry, very lightly floured work surface.

Flour your hands generously. Tilt the rolling pin and sprinkle it with flour as you rotate the pin. With your hands, take this scraggly looking mass of barely held together dough, and just push it together. You want something that looks like a circle because you are going to be cutting it into two or four pieces, depending on how much you made. But do not spend more than a couple of minutes with your hands on the dough.

Using a big knife or a bench scraper, cut this circle of dough to create as equally sized pieces as you can. Pull out one piece at a time and, without handling it too much, shape into a circle. Do not worry if they do not look cohesive. You are going to wrap your disks in plastic wrap. Give the disks a little breathing room in the plastic, because you are now going to use the heel of your hand to press the dough together, and flatten it a bit.

If you are a person who runs hot you may want to chill these disks for a spell in the fridge. Because I was rolling out four circles of crust I kept all but the one I was working with chilling.

Unwrap your package and lightly flour the rolling surface. Flour the top of the disk and pat down with your floured hands.

With as little flour as you can manage, roll the dough into the crust size that you need. Constantly pick up the dough and move it. If you feel it sticking, gently lift up one side and throw some flour underneath. Quickly! **If you are rolling dough and it is not moving, you may end up with a tough crust.** What you want to see in the finished product is visible smears and pieces of butter.

Try to control the rolling pin and move from the center out. Try to stay away from using the rolling pin to go back and forth. Your rhythm should go something like this:

roll North, pick up the pin, roll Northeast, pick up dough and move counter-clockwise, repeat.

If you are right handed be careful not to roll too heavily on this side. You want the crust as evenly rolled as you can muster. A thin or thick crust won't kill anyone but it won't bake evenly...

Pull your frozen pie dish out and lay your dough into it. If you see that it is coated with flour, use your dry pastry brush to clear it of excess flour. Crimp or fold or leave the edges raw. If you need to trim, use the sharpest scissors in the house as using a knife tends to stretch the dough.

If you are making two pies, roll out and lay in the bottoms first, freezing after each.

Now you can put your filling together and pre-heat the oven. The less time the fruit stays in the bowl with the sugar, the less it will macerate and the more likely you will have chunks of individual fruit personality to meet when you can finally eat it.

If you are making two pies, start with a hotter oven than you need, let's say at least 25F.

When your filling is ready, roll out the tops. Move as quickly as you can as the oven's heat is now affecting the temperature of the dough.

I like to sometimes brush a little cream on the dough, and or sprinkle a generous amount of raw/turbinado sugar on top. Raw sugar is not quite as sweet as white sugar and it won't melt in the oven, so it creates a nice extra texture that lays on top of the buttery-flakiness of the all butter dough.

Using a glass baking dish is helpful especially in the baking. Make sure your top and bottom crusts are getting some good color. I bake my pies on a cookie pan with parchment on top so that when the pie insides bubble up and out, my dish-washing will be that much easier later on.

Although pie is hard to resist when it comes out of the oven, pie is best when it has had time to settle, cool down and come together.

My strongest suggestions concerning the filling are about the amount of sugar and thickener you use. Attempt to assemble the pies with fruits of varying textures, sweetnesses, and tart-acidic characteristics. This way you won't need as much sweetener. Remember that no matter how much cornstarch or tapioca or flour you add, the pie will not stand upright on the plate the way Diner pies do. Those fillings are far from the fruit they mimic, many of them do not even need to be refrigerated!

The more thickener you use, the less the fruit will taste like itself. This is a great fact.

Pies, like summer and preserve making, is a celebration of fruit at its prime, bursting with elbow-lickingly sticky juices. Ripe fruit, an overabundance of it, and company coming for the weekend. Test the limits of people mouths, not the strength of starch activation.

I don't refrigerate my pies unless there's still some left after the third day. But they do reheat nicely in a toaster oven. If I'm in an English mood I'll have warm pie with cold whipping cream poured over top. But nothing beats real vanilla ice cream.

Conquer the pie crust this summer! Don't be afraid! Use these instructions and ask questions in the comment section for further details.

Mmmmmmmmm pie. Pie makes me happy.

Comments

[Loretta]

OMG. Must have pie. Right now. Luckily I am at a coffee house that has pie, but I'm sure nothing like yours! You've given me the bravery to attempt a piecrust as soon as we are back from vacation.

[Andrea]

Best post I've read in a long time. I'd been planning on making peach pies this weekend -- you've talked me out of using shortening. Thanks!

[julie]

I HEART PIE!!! Thanks for the renewed motivation, I, too, feel another pie baking day coming in the not so distant future....

[maura]

I love when you write about pie!

Was it you that wrote that pie dough can smell your fear? I say: Be bold and remember that okay pie is better than no pie at all.

[Dr. Biggles]

I made blackberry jam, does that count? Not for a pie though, huh?

These kinds of posts should be under a heading from your main page. Features baby, features. One will want this at their fingertips every second.

Biggles

[Julie]

Hi Shuna,
I want to thank you for your incredibly valuable crust-making post. I am becoming more and more excited about pastry lately. I just made my first tart (with fresh figs!) and to me, it was spectacular. I want to do pie now and am on the lookout for summer fruit that is worthy of my efforts. It is not so easy to find in South Florida, believe it or not. I also really enjoyed your response to the review of Heat. I have not yet read it, but you make me want to read it much more now. It sounds like a really honest account, and I appreciate excellent writing. You emailed me awhile back about the distracting background pattern on my blog. It turns out that I had no idea that in Firefox and other browsers, the background took over the whole screen! In IE, all my text was on a white background. We finally realized what you were referring to and fixed the problem. I feel awful that you thought I would subject my reader's eyes to text on such a busy pattern! Thanks again for the pie post.
Julie

[Joe Fish]

Shuna,
Your level of detail is awe inspring. As someone who used to bake hundreds of pies a week competing with a commercial bread oven, I learned some things just reading your post. I can't wait to get into my [now amateur] kitchen and put them to use.
Thanks.

[Joe Fish]

Shuna,
Do ever have trouble with shrinkage when blind baking? I recently read about blind baking upside down with doughs sandwhiched between identical pie plates. Anything to this?

[Brett]

I went olallieberry picking at Swanton last weekend and made a big batch of jam, saving just enough berries to use in a peach olallie pie. Then I lost the nerve (and the time) and ate those berries and peaches in their pure, naked goodness. When crust phobia strikes again, I know where I'll be looking for help and encouragement. Go Eggbeater!

[Karen]

Thanks so much for this post! I love to bake, but I've always been intimedated by the pie crust. I just made one on Sunday with freshly picked ollaberries and it was really good -- but I did have some trouble with my dough. Your advice is great! It totally addressed my problems. I'm ready to tackle my next pie! thanks

[Jill]

THANK you. I now have a better understanding than ever before about the particular details that make or break a crust. There will be some happy campers in my neck of the woods before too long.

[Sandy]

Wow, I'm going to make a pie right now. After reading this...I *can* make pie...I *can* make pie...Thanks so much for the excellent guide. Sandy

[shuna fish lydon]

Yeah Pie making all around!!

Biggles--

DONE! Thank you for yet another fabulous improvement tip for eggbeater!

Joe Fish,

Shrinkage is indeed an issue with blind baking. The beeter your dough is made and rested between sessions the less it will shrink, though. Also it depends on the dough.

If a dough need gluten activated, like puff or croissant or brisee, than it is more likely to shrink.

What I do is I have everything as frozen as I can get it before it goes in the oven. The oven is HOT. This way I get baking before melting.

I also use way more beans than most people, as I feel the strength and the weight of them prevents the dough from any funny business.

Let me know if this helps!

[Libbette]

Hi, I just saw your question on http://www.afullbelly.com/2006/06/batali_bourdain.html#comments

and did my best to answer. Your site is great, looking forward to exploring it more!

[Abby]

I never wanted birthday cakes when I was little. I wanted my grandmother's butterscotch PIE. Her crust was like HEAVEN. I miss those pies, and her, terribly. Thanks for the great directions ... perhaps I'll try to carry on Maw Maw's tradition ...

[katie]

you are amazing! this is such an awesome post.

[meginAB]

I agree with so much of this
Definitely no margarine
Always raw sugar
And I will have to try the no cooling required crust.
The other thing about homemade pie is how happy people are to eat it. It is truly a treat that someone put time and energy into. To share a homemade pie with someone shows them how important they are to you. I feel like it is a gift like no other.
PS I love your site - from across the country (NE Florida.) I was a chef for 5 years, pastry for 5 years, caterer for 5 years. Now starting my own place. I love the sense of community I get reading your site and knowing others think the way I do. If only our farmers markets were like yours! We'll get there!

[Joe Fish]

Shuna,
I will try the freezing. FYI, I use pennies as pie weights, the additional weight helps, and although I can't offer empirical data, anecdotally the metal promotes interior browning (although they are more expensive than beans).
Thanks,
F

[Sara]

Thank you, Shuna! I'm with you about summer. I do more baking in summer than ever. The only challenge when I lived in California was saving enough fruit to bake. In Massachusetts, it's less challenging, because way too much of our fruit comes from Washington and California anyway, single hybrids bred for shelf life, picked green and never really ripening to full sweetness or nutritional value before they rot. No nectarines here leap into my hands, and the strawberries make me cry, and it's all made that much tougher by the fact that I'm a total stickler for organics. What we do see here does make some pretty good pies, though.

If you have not already done so, I highly recommend reading the book American Pie (absolutely no relation to the pop song or the stupid movies) by Pascale LeDraoulec. Basically it recounts the author's adventures with various friends and an old Volvo traveling across the country looking for people who still make pie by hand -- and their recipes. It's funny and beautiful.

Cheers!

[Ulla]

That looks so great! Reminds me of summer in my mother's kitchen. Baking is love!

[Fatemeh]

May I, may I, may I PLEASE, pretty PLEASE...

...come watch you make a pie?

PLEASE? My fear of dough makes me tremble at the sight of Trader Joe's pizza dough.

[Nicky]

We've had a fantastic pie last year during a short visit in Durango (Colorado). I'm still waiting to get the promised recipe, but maybe yours is just as good ;)

[Randi]

I always use Martha Stewart's Pate Brise recipe. I can't stand shortening either.

[Alanna]

Lots of great tips here, even for a long-time pastry maker. I lost the knack a couple of years back but am finally the pastry groove back ... it took returning to lard / shortening but I'll be progressing to butter again any week now! But only after re-conferring with this post! Thanks so much, this is just terrific. REALLY.

[Lani]

How nice to read about making pies! I went to visit my dad in Vermont recently, and we made six pies in three days. My favorite was peach/raspberry/strawberry. The main difference is that instead of sugar we used maple syrup (I guess thats what happens in Vermont---maple syrup finds its way into all your cooking). The maple syrup worked really well and had a rich flavor-- really delicious.
Shuna-thanks again for writing, I always love reading your posts!