Getting Crusty: Exploratory Tales From The Land of Pie
For two years I’ve been adamant about learning how to make the perfect pie crust. A savory girl, I like to make pie dough more for quiche than pie (although this Thanksgiving I discovered chocolate pecan pie). Still, my crusts aren’t elegant in form and they’re not exactly ‘flaky’. My dough typically rolls out OK, but it seems kind of stiff. I’ve experimented with things like vegan butter (oxymoron, I know) and organic vegetable shortening. Let’s just say, it’s been a process.
If you’ve ever embarked on a similar journey, you’re familiar with the range of certainty and opinion the baking world holds for how to combine flour, fat and water to create the perfect crust. The pie world has three main camps: those that use shortening; those that use butter; and, those that use both. After trial and error, this decision is now easy for me. I want something that comes from a cow, not a can; and though something called leaf lard sounds interesting, I can’t readily source it.
The issue is which ingredient creates a flakier crust. I believe the quality of flaky (insert your favorite self-deprecating joke here) is in the making of the dough. Some swear by food processors and others keep it real with a pastry cutter (blender). I didn’t have an opinion on this technical point, so I set out this week to see which dough turns out better – one made with electricity, or one made with muscle. Up until now I’ve been favoring muscle with both a pastry cutter and a knife, which Chez Pim makes look ridiculously easy (but it’s not).
I also thought I’d round out the experiment by trying two different butter techniques: cubing refrigerated butter v. grating frozen butter. I had done neither – just sliced it up into big squares. Lastly, I also found this crust that calls for almond flour (wouldn’t you know, I bought some to use and then proceeded to forget I bought it) and this gluten-free crust that sounds amazing except I’d need to take a second mortgage out on my home to afford the five different kinds of flour it requires (I willed Will Ferrell showing up with ‘flours’ like he did in Stranger Than Fiction, but no dice). So here’s what I did….
Pie Dough 1 – Cubed butter, pastry cutter (blender)
I love this method, which I learned from Smitten Kitchen. Of all the online dissertations I found for making the perfect crust, Deb’s Pie Crust 102 shed important and somewhat life changing light on What Could Be. Cubing is a snap with my pastry knife and the pastry cutter makes everything come together quickly. Clean up is easy. I refrigerated the crust for 90 minutes, rolled it out (following these directions), and ended up with a lovely looking pie shell that I put back in the fridge a few more hours. Keeping the dough, especially the butter, chilled is perhaps the most important element in making a flaky crust.
Pie Dough 2 – Grated butter, food processor
I do not love this method. Grating the butter by hand added an element of heat that concerned me, and all those butter shavings were a mess (by the way, even though grated butter looks like a creamy Parmesan cheese, sadly, it still tastes like butter). After combining the flour and butter in the food processor, pulsing it briefly and drizzling in ice cold water, I still had to remove the dough and mix it by hand in a bowl. The dough was easier to work with at this point because the butter had warmed up, but overall, this method took me longer than the pastry cutter. Back in the fridge for more chilling.
And then…
I made a pie! I adapted this Scandinavian Sour Cream Apple Pie recipe by using real Rodelle vanilla bean, not quite a full cup of sour cream, and placing Pie Dough 2 on top, instead of the streusel-like topping the recipe calls for. I have never understood how to make a crust look good until I read about tucking the excess dough under. Duh. That, and cubing butter, were hands down the greatest take-aways from my experiment.
But was it flaky?
You know, this just wasn’t my goal. I believe in butter, I believe in the hand-mixing technique, I believe in keeping the dough cold. I just believed that flaky would be the natural outcome of my dough. I had friends over last night to taste my pie and when my girlfriend asked, “How do you get your crust so flaky?” I just smiled. Ever been there? Do tell. I’d love to know your obsession with making the perfect pie crust.
Mixing it up with glee,
Carol
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Tags: baking, pastry cutter, pastry knife, pie crust recipe, recipe apple pie, rodelle vanilla, smitten kitchen, traditions, vanilla, vanilla beans
