Make the perfect pie dough for the perfect pie and rave reviews
Pie dough is often thought of as a chore to be avoided. Not anymore. With the right procedure and plenty of time, you can make pie dough everyone will rave about.
Check the link below to the Thanksgiving recipes for more menu ideas and a prep list template.
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In one of the food facebook groups I follow one person posted a recipe for the perfect pie crust.
She was right. It was the recipe.
1 ¼C all purpose flour
½ t sugar
½ C butter, chilled
¼ C water, cool
¼ salt
That was it. No procedure. I commented about the lack of procedure and got a few snarky comments including maybe I should find a beginning baker’s group.
Let’s say instead of pie dough the recipe was for muffins.
Butter
Sugar
Eggs
Flour
Salt
Leavining
Flavoring
Garnish
Without a procedure, could you make a muffin you are proud to present? Maybe. It isn’t impossible, but you might not know that a muffin can very easily be overmixed and that’ll impact the tenderness of the baked muffin. You would have no way to know the butter should be melted and that sugar isn’t a dry ingredient like flour, but is considered a wet ingredient.
Since we’re here pancakes are basically muffins as far as the mixing procedure goes and the basics are this. Mix the wet together. Melted butter, not hot, eggs, sugar, and buttermilk, and flavoring. Sift the dry ingredients, flour, salt, and leavening. Add the wet to the dry and fold to mix. It’s okay if it’s a bit lumpy. Any recipe that reads to whisk the mix together well is directing you to make tough pancakes.
I know the idea of a tough cake or muffin or pancake seems odd. It can happen. It is also not the end of the world. Let the batter rest about 5 minutes. I usually make gluten free pancakes which I allow to rest 10 minutes since the GF flours rehydrate at a slower rate than wheat. I also give the mix one or two large folds, bringing the bottom to the top before I portion and griddle.
So, back to that pie dough. If you don’t know, and how could you in her pie dough recipe, overmixing the pie dough risks the dough shrinking when it is baked. You have no way to know in advance that the pie dough is overmixed.
The person who posted that recipe commented that you simply add the ingredients in the order listed.
That’s not a procedure. The muffin recipe, excepting for quantities, is in the order of use. Fat lot of good that does.
I’ll add a link to the show notes page for my pie dough page which includes a video I made about making pie dough. The counterintuative idea is the less mixing the better. Pie dough is a biscuit and biscuits benefit from less mixing and manipulation.
I start the pie dough in a mixing bowl. I also cut the cold butter into approximately ¼ to ½ inch chunks. I use milk and it’s very cold. I also use egg.
Into the mixing bowl I add the flour, sugar, salt, and butter. Paddle that on low until the butter is well mixed into the flower but still is in small, just smaller, pieces. By no means do I intend to fully incorporate the butter into the flour. Those chunks of butter are going to contribute to the flakiness we so crave in a pie dough.
I mix the egg and the milk together and add that to the mixing bowl. On low speed I mix it for maybe 10 seconds. No kidding. 10 seconds.
In the parlance of the baker, it’ll be a shaggy mess.
That’s okay. The real mixing happens on the counter. To mix the pie dough, place the shaggy mess on a clean portion of your countertop. You’ll need a good couple of square feet to work. The video does a good job of showing what I’m going to explain. The visual is big help.
Place the pie dough shaggy mess into a pile in the middle of your work space. With the heel of your dominant hand, press down on the center of the pile of pie dough and at the same time, move your hand forward.
The goal is to sort of knead the pie dough by pushing it down. When you move your hand forward, you are pressing the flour into the butter but not really activiating the gluten, which will make it shrink. This process of pushing down and away will build the pie dough from the shaggy mess.
Repeat a second time and a third. As you work through the pile, you’ll have a new pile and edges. Gather them together on the counter and repeat. In only a few minutes they shaggy mess will look exactly like pie dough.
Pie dough for the bottoms of pans are easy to determine. For every inch of pie pan, plan on an ounce of pie dough. That will include excess for a nice crimped edge and some excess waste. As you get good at making pie dough, you can cut that ratio down.
With your finished pie dough on the counter, weigh the portions as you require them for your pies. Shape them into round disks, not balls, and refigerate for at least 4 hours before you roll them.
Depending on the pie you are making, or maybe you are making a quiche, some pie dough requires baking first. That’s called blind baking.
Since pie dough is a biscuit it will rise a bit. Even though it has no leavening, there’s steam in the dough and that will give lift to the pie crust. So, it gets weighted down. Pie weights are snazy ways for stores to take more of your cash. Dried beans is a popular way to hold down the pie dough, but they start to smell. Really bad. I use rice.
Dock the pie crust. That means to poke holes into the bottom. A dinner fork is fine for this. Make rows with the fork tines, starting in the middle and working to the edges.
Tear off a piece of parchment paper big enough to go over the edges of the pie. Crinkle it up into a ball then unfold it and place it into the pie crust. Add the rice. Gently push the rice to the edges of the pie shell. Place the pan on a sheet pan and bake for about 10 minutes. Remove the parchment by grabbing all four corners and carefully and slowly lifting the parchment out. Look at the pie dough. Is it sticking somewhere? Use a table knife to loosen that spot from the parchment.
Tears sometimes happen. With the pie shell emptied of the parchment, replace the pie shell to the over and bake until it is nicely golden brown.
Baked pie shells will not brown more. The crusts will but not the bottoms.
If your tear made a hole, no worries. You’ll have some trim left over. Work a piece of that pie dough trim between your fingers to be rather thin and larger than the hole. When the baked pie dough is cool, gently press the raw dough over the hole and gently scrape the edges of the patch into the baked pie dough. That should patch that hole well. The baked finished crust will not be raw in that spot. It also will not be flaky and crunchy.
As with most things mixing, plan for extra time to make this, especially if this is your first time. Slow and steady is better than in a rush and making a mistake. Custard pies, and pumpkin pie is a custard pie, need time to cool, so make pie dough Tuesday for to bake on Wednesday and cool till Thursday.
