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Baking The Perfect Pie
Grandma’s secrets to a slice of heaven
During the holidays, it seemed like Grandma always had a pie in the oven and a few cooling on the kitchen table. She received requests often—especially for her Caramel Apple Pie—and was always happy to oblige. It’s hard to recall a Thanksgiving dessert table without her Holiday Pumpkin Pie, which she would decorate with dainty sugar-dusted leaves cut from the extra crust.
Easy as Pie
Grandma always told us that a great pie was the result of a great crust. Though she adjusted most of her recipes to use refrigerated or prebaked piecrusts for simplicity, she took much pride in making her own.
Making a homemade piecrust is as simple as 3-2-1. That’s 3 parts flour, 2 parts fat, and 1 part water, measured by weight. Remember this ratio and you can whip up a pie anytime. Grandma also added a bit of salt to enhance the taste.
Homemade Piecrust
1 teaspoon salt
12 ounces all purpose flour
8 ounces cold butter, cut into small chunks
4 ounces ice water
1) Add the salt to the flour and mix.
2) Cut the butter into the flour mixture, using a pastry blender or 2 knives to make a flaky or mealy dough*. Add the water a little a time, mixing with your hands, until the dough is evenly moistened, but still loose and somewhat-jagged looking. Do not overwork the dough.
3) Gently press the dough into a disk, wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for about an hour before rolling.
*Two Types of Pie Dough: Flaky & Mealy
Both flaky and mealy pie dough are made from the same ingredients. The difference between the two is how the fat is blended into the flour. The resulting textures of each determine which kind of pie they are best suited for.
With a flaky pie dough, the fat is rubbed into the flour to form large nuggets, about the size of peas. Flaky dough is used for top crusts and lattices such as with Grandma’s Backyard Pie. It is also used for prebaked or “blind baked” shells (see hints and tips) used for pudding or cream pies, like Chocolate Banana Cream Pie. Flaky pie dough is very tender and shouldn’t be used to underline a filling that is too moist, as it will soak through and make the pie soggy.
For mealy pie dough, the fat is blended into the flour more thoroughly until it resembles coarse corn meal. Mealy pie dough is best used as a bottom crust for moister fillings like fruit and custard pies such as Grandma’s Apple Cherry Pie, Maple Syrup Pie, or Farmhouse Lemon Meringue Pie, because it is stronger and resists soaking through.
Pie Making Hints & Tips
From burnt crusts to boiled-over filling, it took years of practice for Grandma to perfect her pie recipes. Thankfully, she let us in on a few of her secrets.
• For a more tender crust, use half shortening or lard and half butter for the fat.
• It is important to keep all of the piecrust ingredients cold. The chilled chunks of butter/fat release steam slowly as the pie bakes, helping to make the crust delicate and flaky. Even the heat from your hands will melt the fat and toughen the dough, so be sure to handle it as little as possible.
• Pie dough can be made in a food processor, just be sure not to overwork it.
• Thoroughly grease and lightly flour the pie plate before adding the dough to keep the crust from sticking. And try not to stretch the dough as you place it in the pan—stretched dough shrinks.
• Blind baking is a method of partially or completely baking a piecrust to set the shape and keep it from getting soggy when wet fillings are added. It’s easy if you know the right tricks. If cooking the filling separately, be sure that both the filling and the crust are completely cooled before adding.
• To keep an unbaked crust from getting soggy, brush with slightly beaten egg whites and refrigerate for 15 minutes. Always pour the filling into the crust just before baking.
• Whether crimped or fancily braided, a decorative piecrust, gives pies a homey feel.
• To keep the edge of the pie from burning, shield the edges with foil as soon as the pie starts to lightly brown. Cut a circle from a piece of foil big enough to wrap over the pie and snip out the center of the circle to form a ring that will securely protects the edges.
• To prevent super-juicy fruit pie fillings from boiling over, stick 3-4 pieces of raw tubular macaroni through the top crust in a circle, about 1 inch from the center. The macaroni tubes allow the steam to vent, releasing pressure that would force out the juices. Remember to remove after baking.
