Vimeo user Animi recently posted this short stop-motion movie on making an apple pie. The video certainly is fun, set to the music of Dave Brubeck. But what we found curious was the method for making pie crust.
Do you make a cylinder of dough to create the sides of your pie dough? Let us know in the comments below.
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Even though it hasn't cooled off that much in my corner of the world, it is technically fall and that means it's pie season. I like to make a wide variety of pies, and that doesn't just mean the filling. There's a whole world of pie and tart crusts out there for an almost endless list of possibilities this fall. Click through to the next few pages for everything you'll need to know about pie and tart crusts for great pies this fall.
Pie doughs are usually either flaky or mealy. Mealy dough is more compact and crisper, while flaky dough is, well, flakier. Both are tender. Mealy crusts are preferred for wet fillings, especially if you're going to fill the pie without partially baking the crust beforehand (blind baking). For mealy crusts, mix the fat longer so that the mixture looks like a course cornmeal before the liquid is added.
Flaky crusts can be used for wet fillings, but should be blind baked first. If you're doing a cream pie, bake the crust first then coat it with chocolate or cocoa butter to help prevent sogginess. You get flakiness by mixing the fat for less time, leaving it in bigger chunks. This creates layers of fat when the dough is rolled out, and a flaky texture in the finished product. Just keep in mind that this type of dough needs a little more hydration.
15oz pastry (or all purpose flour) .75 oz sugar 1.5 tsp salt 11 oz butter, cold and cut into cubes/chunks 4.5 oz cold water
Mix the flour, sugar and salt to evenly distribute everything. Cut in the cold butter with a fork, your finger, a pastry knife or the paddle attachment on a mixer. mix until you get the desired size chunks of butter. Add the cold water just until incorporated. Rest the dough in the fridge for at least four hours to allow for proper hydration of the flour. Then you can roll out as usual.
Pâte Sablée is another example of a tart dough used mainly for desserts, and it can also be used for cookies or as a component to French style cakes. Sablée translates as sand which is befitting its crumbly, cookie-like texture. Some recipes, though it's not traditional, include egg yolks, and a few recipes actually call for the yolks to be cooked which makes for a more tender crust.
Cooked yolks, 2oz (3-4) softened butter 9.5 oz salt 1/8 tsp powdered sugar 5oz uncooked egg yolks 2oz (3-4) pastry ( or all purpose) flour 13 oz
Cream the butter, salt, and sugar well. Press the cooked yolks through a sieve and blend that into the mixture along with the uncooked yolks. Mix in the flour just until everything is gathered up into the dough. Refigerate for at least four hours.
Blind baking is a common practice in the baking world. The definition is to partially or fully bake a pie or tart crust before adding the filling. Since a pie of tart dough has a tendency to warp during cooking, it must be weighted down so that it can retain its shape.
To blind bake, simply line the pie dish or tart pan with whatever dough you're using. Preheat the oven, usually to 325 or 350. Lay a coffee filter or similar type of paper over the lined pan and fill it with some kind of material that will not burn or weigh the dough down too much. Dried beans are the preferred method in most bakeries as they are inexpensive, don't burn easily, and are heavy enough to hold the dough down without crushing it. Also, beans are able to fill all of the corners. I'm not sure how well rice would work, but it might be worth a try.
Blind baking is generally used for pies with wet fillings to give the crust a head start and avoid undercooked crust. I like to blind bake at home just to shorten the final baking time. If the crust has a head start, it won't take the pie quite as long to bake once the filling is in it. Also if the pie is cream or chiffon filled you'd have to bake the pie shell in advance anyway as the filling shouldn't be cooked any further.
With the holiday's just around the corner, we'll soon be digging into the wonderful world of pie. Do you have a perfect pie crust recipe, but when you put the filling in, the bottom seems to get too soggy? No problem. We've got several solutions for you!
You're all set to stick your pie crust in the oven to blind bake, and you realize that you don't have any pie weights. No need to fret, there are plenty of alternatives in your kitchen already.
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Pie crusts are a tricky thing. I admit that I don't have a whole lot of experience with them and when I have tried to wrestle a cohesive sheet of dough into a pie pan, I've often settled for something far less than perfect. I'm okay with that though, I fill it with something delicious and call it rustic. It works for me.
But having read the Oregonian's food section today, I think I may have just learned the secret to a perfect pie crust every time. Olive oil. Danielle Certoni had always admired her mother-in-law's apple pie, and when the in-laws came for Thanksgiving, she asked her to make it. When she went into see how it was going, Danielle was surprised to discover that the secret was olive oil instead of butter or shortening. Apparently, it's quite common in other food cultures and produces a light and flaky crust without needing the same delicate treatment that we've come to expect that pastry needs. I don't have any pies on my cooking schedule, but the next time I need a crust, I'm turning to this recipe. If you make it, let me know how it turns out!
The picture is of an actual Olive Oil Pie Crust. It was posted on Flickr complete with recipe and entertaining narrative of how it came to be.
When I read the article in the New York Times where a chef tested Crisco, coconut oil and other fats for frying and baking, I was very surprised to hear that Crisco came out on top in just about every test. I'm familiar with how shortening works, so it wasn't the performance that surprised me, rather it was the fact that there was not a crowd of foodies (or at least readers of Gourmet magazine) outside the test kitchen complaining that an all-shortening tarte tatin, which usually has a very buttery puff-pastry base, beat out butter. Butter unquestionably tastes better, especially in such a simple dish, and the only way to really screw it up is if you have a lot of difficulty working with pastry in general. To get a "firm and crumbly" crust with butter, it sounds like the testing chef seriously overworked his dough.
But to get back to the main point, the thing that was really surprising was not the tarte tatin result, but the fact that they didn't consider testing trans-fat free Crisco in addition to regular Crisco. Surely a taste test that pitted this against an alternative with trans-fats would have been more useful to professional and non-professional chefs alike! Crisco Zero has been on the market for about a year and a half now. It's not quite as widely available as regular Crisco, but it can usually be found at regular grocery stores. It offers the same performance - resulting, for example, in a flaky pie crust - but does not have any trans fats per serving. I've used it before with good results and it seems like a potential alternative for chefs trying to reconfigure their recipes to exclude trans-fats.
One of the reasons that we love and respect Cook's Illustrated is that they take care to cover all the bases in their testing of foods, recipes and kitchen gadgets, filling us in with the whys and hows of the process, so that we really understand what when into their decisions and can trust the conclusions that they make. Sometimes, however, those conclusions didn't really need to be drawn. A recent test showed that homemade pie crust faired better in a taste test than prepacked, store-bought crusts. In a pinch, they would only consider recommending the Whole Foods Pie Shells.
But unlike many of the CI tests, it doesn't seem like these crusts got a fair shake. After all, if you have the time and culinary skill to confidently make a pie crust from scratch, you're probably not going to buy one. A more equitable test would have pitted the frozen store crusts against the crust of frozen pies, since anyone pressed for time could be trying to make a decision between those options and is probably not factoring in a completely from-scratch pie. The problem with that situation, which is probably why the test kitchen didn't consider it, is that you're tasting two things that aren't as good as they could be. So instead of choosing between the lesser of two evils, you might want to consider just picking up a pie at a bakery, Marie Callendar's or a similarly pie-oriented store and at least take the quality up a couple of notches. And maybe practice making a homemade crust (which can be stored in the freezer for a few weeks) for next year.
Since we were talking about the best apples to use in making pies last week, it put me in the mood to make one myself. I love making pies because, even though there is some prep work involved, the procedure is very straightforward. Also, I really enjoy making homemade pie crust. It's fun to get your fingers dirty and a flaky, homemade crust is better than one you can buy at the store - especially because you can taste the work that went into making it.
If you've never made a homemade pie before, winter is the perfect time to start and apple is the best kind to start with. Not only are the apples easy to work with, but the fact that the weather is colder makes it easier to handle the dough for the crust. In summer, you need to work faster to keep the butter from melting as you work it in to the flour. After the jump, you'll find a photo-heavy, step-by-step guide to making both the crust and the whole pie. I make my crusts with a combination of shortening (non-hydrogenated, for those who are concerned) and butter. The combination of butter, which adds flavor and some leavening, and shortening, which adds tenderness and flakiness will produce the best crusts. I use a 3-1 ratio, so not much shortening is needed.
When fall comes around, pies are one of the best desserts you can bring to the table, whether you are opting for pumpkin or the fruitier flavors from apples, pears and cranberries. The crust is usually the most difficult part for most cooks, but once you have mastered the dough-making technique (or have broken down and purchased ready made-dough), the job is only halfway done. The second challenge is to make the crust look presentable. Fortunately, there are a couple of gadgets that can help. One is a lattice cutter, which can simply be pressed down into the dough to punch out a traditional-looking, although not actually interwoven, lattice top for your pie. If you want to make your lattice a little more creative, you can opt for the new oak-leaf lattice cutter, instead. The other thing that will really spruce up your pie is a set of piecrust cutters, which punch out little seasonal shapes from your dough. They can be used to create vents in the top layer of the crust or you can punch out shapes from the unused scraps of crust and use them to decorate the surface of the pie.
During the crazy holiday season, everyone could use a holiday planner, with ideas for things to cook, cookie swap recipes, customized placecards, and more. -on-flickr---photo-sharing!.jpg)
When I read the article in the New York Times where a chef tested Crisco, coconut oil and other fats for frying and baking, I was very surprised to hear that Crisco came out on top in just about every test. I'm familiar with how shortening works, so it wasn't the performance that surprised me, rather it was the fact that there was not a crowd of foodies (or at least readers of Gourmet magazine) outside the test kitchen complaining that an all-shortening tarte tatin, which usually has a very buttery puff-pastry base, beat out butter. Butter unquestionably tastes better, especially in such a simple dish, and the only way to really screw it up is if you have a lot of difficulty working with pastry in general. To get a "firm and crumbly" crust with butter, it sounds like the testing chef seriously overworked his dough.
One of the reasons that we love and respect Cook's Illustrated is that they take care to cover all the bases in their testing of foods, recipes and kitchen gadgets, filling us in with the whys and hows of the process, so that we really understand what when into their decisions and can trust the conclusions that they make. Sometimes, however, those conclusions didn't really need to be drawn. A recent test showed that homemade pie crust faired better in a taste test than prepacked, store-bought crusts. In a pinch, they would only consider recommending the Whole Foods Pie Shells.
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