Pie Crust (and Pie)

When you're baking a pie with a double crust, the tradition is to bake the whole pie at once. This way you crimp the edges of the top and bottom together and make it look all pretty. This presents a problem for the food writer. How do you demonstrate a double crust pie, and blind baking a lower crust at the same time? By ignoring convention. This will not be the prettiest pie in the world, but it was delicious. Feel free to follow this lead, or make the pie as you feel fit, with a single crust, double crust, or blind-double crust.

The crust is incredibly simple. And it should look pretty familiar. We did a similar dough way back in the biscuit recipe. The ingredients are things you probably already have in your kitchen: flour, butter, water, salt. 

The basic pie dough recipe is Michael Ruhlman's 3-2-1 pie dough. That's three parts flour, two parts fat, and one part liquid, by weight, and some salt. For a top and a bottom crust, I used 12 ounces, or 340 grams, or about 2 and 2/3 cups. You'll also need two sticks of chilled butter, about 4 ounces of cold water, and a couple of hearty pinches of salt (this is a scientific measure).

Cut the butter into chunks and work it into the flour and salt. Add the water, a little at a time until the dough comes together. The amount of water you need will vary based on things like how accurate your scale is, how packed you measuring cup is, and which brand of butter you use. Again, this is an exact science, folks.

Flour the dough and working surface and roll it out. Wrap it up in saran wrap or wax paper and throw it in the fridge. This will be a recurring theme, just like it was for the biscuits. Failure to put the dough in the fridge will result in chewy, non-flaky dough. This is discouraged. Leave the dough in the fridge for at least 20 minutes, I erred on the side of an hour plus each time, mainly because I had the time to kill.

Take the dough out and roll it, then fold it into thirds. This may sound strange, but it's easier to whack the dough a few times with a rolling pin before rolling it out. It loosens everything up a bit without over working the dough by rolling back and forth. Once you fold it in thirds, throw it back in the fridge. I did this three times, which results in 27 delicious, flaky layers. 

Preheat the oven to 325, and roll out half the dough. Place it in the bottom of your pie pan with some over hang, it's going to shrink a little in the cooking process. Throw some parchment paper over the pie dough, and fill it with ceramic pie weights or dried beans. 

Bake it for 20 minutes, take out the weights (just pick up the parchment paper carefully, holding all four corners, it's quite cool), and bake for another 15 minutes. I shouldn't have to say this, but, just to be safe, open the oven door all the way, slide out the rack, then remove the parchment paper. Don't be a hero, you'll just burn yourself. Now it's time to worry about the filling. I used strawberries and rhubarb, which are delicious. However, they are now a little past their season. So I'm going to gloss over it. Fill the pie with fresh fruit and sugar, you pretty much can't go wrong.

For reference, I used three large stalks of rhubarb, 16 ounces of strawberries, and two cups of sugar. There was also some filling left over. So, moving right along. Put your filling of choice in the lower, already baked crust.

Take the remaining dough from the fridge, roll it out, and top the pie. Make sure to slice it, poke it, cut leaves out of it, make lattices, or otherwise perforate it. We do this so, if you make a proper double crust, the pie does not explode while cooking. Unless the plan is to make an Alien themed pie, in which case, send pictures.

Bake at 425 for an hour, or until the crust looks brown and the fruit looks bubbly. Remove, and let cool.

If you question how flaky this dough was, I give you this picture, blown up from the picture at the top of the post. This is really just to show off how flaky the dough is and how awesome my camera is.

Seriously, you can see those buttery layers. If there is a takeaway, here, it's that you should err on the side of keeping the crust in the fridge, and the ingredients cold as long as possible. The longer the dough is warm the more chance of it forming tough, chewy gluten. Which while great in bread, is bad in pies.

Ingredients:

12 ounces or 340 grams or 2 and 2/3 cups flour

8 ounces or 230 grams or 2 sticks of butter, chilled and cut into small chunks

4 ounces of cold water (with a couple of extra ounces, just in case)

Procedure:

Mix the salt and flour in a mixing bowl.

Press the cut up, chilled, butter into the flour. Try to get BB sized bits, but don't over work it. The butter will be redistributed when you roll it out later.

Add water until the dough comes together, and roll it out once. If you don't use all the water, don't worry, if you need a little extra, don't worry. Wrap the dough in saran wrap or wax paper and throw it in the fridge, wait at least 20 minutes.

Roll the dough out so one side is particularly long and fold it over in thirds. Refrigerate again. Repeat twice, so you'll have rolled it out, and folded it in third three times. Refrigerate once more.

Roll out the dough for a blind crust, or double crust and use it appropriately. Or use the dough for a pasty, or a tart.

Comments

[Rachael]

Nice post! Had me giggling.