It’s finally a calm day. The catering events are over, the clients are fed, the checks are deposited and the bills are paid. Cat box cleaned, floors mopped and chopping boards bleached. Okay, I’m good to go!
Today, I thought I’d follow up on my Pie Crust article. We need to take it out of theory and give it a whirl of practice. The following recipe is from the article Pie Dreams by Nicole Rees featured in the October/November 2009 issue (#101) of Fine Cooking Magazine (page 58). I will give you Nicole’s original recipe and make my ingredient adaptions in the parenthesis:
Basic Pie Dough (makes one 9 inch pie crust)
6 ounces (1 1/3 cups) of unbleached all-purpose flour (we’ll use Bob’s Red Mill White Pastry flour)
1 tsp. granulated sugar (we’ll use C&H Baker’s Sugar…it’s finer)
1/2 tsp. table salt (we’ll use Morton’s Kosher salt)
4 ounces (8 Tbs) of cold unsalted butter, preferably European style, cut into 3/4 inch pieces (we’ll use Plugra)
3-4 Tbs. of ice water (no substitutes here. I’d rather drink the Vodka that Cooks Illustrated recommends than put it in the pie dough).
Side Note: The article that this recipe is adapted from is excellent. I highly recommend that you go and drop $7.00 and pick up Fine Cooking Magazine. Nicole has better pictures. I took all my own photos for this article and my camera was covered in pie gunk when I finished.
Here's what we'll be using
Mise en Place
Mise en Place is French for “everything in its place” or a rougher translation, “get it together”. Before you start, get your act together. It will be loads quicker and easier if you do. So, like go get the bowls, the measuring cups and spoons and all your ingredients. Measure everything out just like the recipe tells you. Then put all the boxes away. Yes, that means to go ahead and cut up the butter in those little pieces (I just cut it down the middle, then cross ways. It’s going to get flattened and there’s NO points for neatness). Put the butter in a bowl and put it back in the fridge until we are ready to use it. We do not want it to get soft. NO NO NO! It must be cold.
CHEF REMINDER: DON’T FORGET TO WASH YOUR HANDS FIRST! No cooties in the crust, please.
Mise en Place!
Next…
Next: Dump the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl and stir it up. Easy.
Then: Take the butter and dump it in the bowl. Using your hands rub the butter into the flour. Make sure the butter is covered with the flour and the flour is coated in the butter. Remember, the butter is going to help prevent too much
Flatten the butter with your hands
gluten formation. That happens when we add the ice water. Make it lumpy, not sandy. If the butter starts to get too soft put the bowl in the fridge for about 15 minutes and go do something else.
Now, the tricky part: Dump that flour and butter mixture on to a Silpat or pastry board. Get your rolling pin, rub a little flour on it, and roll that butter flat. It should look like
The butter is flat like paint chips
paint chips. Scrape in a pile and flatten again. Make sure the pieces are flat.
Then dump it all back into the bowl.
Add the ice water one tablespoon at a time and bring the dough together with a fork. We want to use as little water as possible. The objective here is to pull the dough together. TRUTH: we do need the flour to make some gluten so don’t be like terrified or freaked out. Without any gluten the dough won’t hold together. We just don’t want to make too much or it’ll be too tough. Like a hockey puck.
Do not kneed. Do not stir too much. Just pull the dough together so it sticks. Then, pat it together and make a flat disk.
Make a disk and wrap it in plastic wrap
Refrigerate for several hours…like 2-4 hours, at least. Or overnight. After a couple of hours you can roll it out and place it in your pie plate. Then, back to the fridge it goes for another hour or so. This allows the dough to get cold and to relax the bit of gluten that has been formed. Make sure that your pie crust really adheres to the edge of the pie pan to help keep shrinkage to a minimum. Also, remember the formula:
HOT OVEN + COLD BUTTER = FLAKY PASTRY.
Blind Baking
If you are going to bake your crust blind (without a filling), turn on the oven when the crust is in the fridge. Prick the bottom of the crust with a fork so the steam that’s coming off the butter won’t make a huge puff in the middle of your crust. Line it with foil, covering the edges. Fill it with pie weights or beans or rice. That also prevents the crust from puffing up in the middle. Bake 350 degrees about 10 minutes until it starts to get brown.
If you want to prevent the crust from getting gooey with a filling, you can sprinkle some Baker’s sugar on the bottom of the crust before baking. When the sugar melts it seals the dough. You can also use a light coating of fine graham cracker crumbs, too.
That’s it. You can freeze this dough for a couple of months, too. Wrap it in plastic first, then in foil. Label and date it. Just defrost in the fridge when you’re ready.
Now go experiment and let me know how it turned out. If you have any questions or comments, just go up to the comment line next to my byline and click. You’ll need to register but, like so what? I want to hear from you anyway.
P.S. I’m searching for a Pear Apple filling for this pie dough. If you have any recipes to contribute I’d love to take a look at them.