Time to throw this food cart into reverse so hard you can hear the gears grind.
I have been harping pretty hard on the importance and necessity of scaling ingredients. I stand by that very proudly. However, as a true culinary southern boy, I believe everyone needs to keep two fundamental measuring-cup-based recipes in their arsenal: one for pie crusts + one for biscuits. We’ll definitely be covering biscuits before too long, but today I want to discuss pie crusts.
Question – Seriously…who the hell makes pies anymore?
Answer – Sad, but true. Our world is in a state of moral and cultural decay. So what kind of person still makes pies? I’ll tell you who…a very sexy person, that’s who! Show up in any crowd with a homemade pie and there’s a mob scene – everyone loves you and and wants you – it’s not just the pie either, it’s YOU.
Let’s bring some sexy back.
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Part 1 – Pie Crust – Problems and Solutions
Most southern cooks can probably identify three common experiences in their pie crust history: (1) being introduced to THE pie crust recipe, (2) being warned about the difficulty in making that recipe work, & (3) having at least one epic fail executing that recipe. I would like to briefly reflect on each of these experiences in my own life.
(1) When I was a kid and learning how to cook, a pie crust recipe was like the Highlander: there could only be one. The recipe I learned was simple enough but far from foolproof – two specific steps seemed shrouded in mystery: cutting butter into the flour until only pea-sized lumps remained and adding ice water in an amount that couldn’t be specified exactly (what’s up with that?).
(2) I learned, early on, that there seemed to be an overwhelming body of evidence to support the fact that pie crusts could smell fear. The great cooks of my childhood and youth were like the dog whisperers of pie – they just seemed to have a magical gift. But let’s face it…even Cesar Millan has been bitten. It’s hard to approach something fearlessly when everyone around you is fueled by years of internalized anxiety and superstition.
(3) Once bitten, twice shy. Am I right? And it didn’t help that southern culture approaches cooking like coaches approach little league baseball – failure doesn’t open the door to a lesson for improvement, failure is about being a loser – in cooking and on the field, failure was typically met with people shaking their heads in disapproval instead of people offering advice and instruction. It’s traumatizing enough when something goes wrong – even worse when you have no feedback to help keep you from repeating your mistake.
Fortunately, there is a growing body of books and articles on cooking science available now to frighten away these ghosts of bad experience. I’d like to introduce a few of these concepts as they apply to pie crust.
Pie crust is made from three primary ingredients: flour, fat in the form of butter/shortening/lard, and water. Salt and sugar are frequently added for flavor. There is no real complexity in the ingredients themselves – all of the real magic occurs in the techniques used to combine them.
First of all, the flour is combined with some salt and possibly with some sugar. Next, fat is introduced. The introduction of fat to flour takes on two roles in a pie crust: (1) it is used to coat the flour in order to inhibit the flour’s ability to absorb water and form excessive gluten, & (2) it is used to coat whole chunks of butter with flour – these chunks (those mysterious pea-sized lumps) get rolled flat into the dough to create layers of flakiness during baking. Water is then introduced to bring the dough together – too little water and the crust will never hold together, too much water and the crust will be soggy, difficult to roll-out, and tough when baked.
The historical ingredients list for making two individual pie crusts never really changed significantly over the years:
Flour – 2 1/2 cups
Salt – 1 tsp.
Sugar – 1 Tbsp.
Butter – 2 sticks (= 8 oz. = 16 Tbsp.)
Ice Water – 1/4 to 1/2 cup
I don’t mind adhering, mostly, to this traditional starting point – like I said above, the ingredients themselves never gave me much of a problem. Where I diverge in pie crust practice is in the dough-making technique. It turns out that a ruthlessly smart approach will transform these inauspicious ingredients into truly foolproof pie crust without fail.
Here are my guidelines for the smart approach:
Guideline 1 – Use a little more butter and fat than the traditional recipe calls for – instead of using 8 oz., I use 10 oz. (that’s 2 1/2 sticks). Better yet, use a mixture of mostly butter and some shortening or lard. America’s Test Kitchen recommends using 12 Tbsp. butter + 8 Tbsp. shortening (which totals 10 oz.).
Note – The optimal ratio of flour to fat to water is 3:2:1 – 3 parts (by weight) of flour to 2 parts (by weight) of fat to 1 part (by weight) of water. Some recipes even go so far as to refer to the traditional recipe as the “321 pie crust” recipe. The traditional recipe would match this 3:2:1 ratio, pretty much dead-on, if one cup of flour actually weighed 5 ounces. In all of my experience, cups of flour weigh much heavier than 5 ounces (hence my previous two posts) so to keep up the right proportions of fat and water, those amounts need to be increased.
Guideline 2 – Keep the butter (and any other solid fat) cold and solid – this point is an absolutely critical component of turning-out a flawless crust. If you use shortening or lard, they need to be refrigerated or frozen as well as the butter. From the time you remove the butter from the refrigerator until you return the dough to the refrigerator to rest, your whole process should take less than 2 minutes.
Guideline 3 – Use a food processor to cut the butter into the flour – don’t use a pastry cutter. You get two benefits from using a food processor: (1) it cuts quickly – efficiency here saves time and is one more way of keeping the butter chunks solid, & (2) it coats the flour uniformly with fat. The only way to fully coat the flour with fat when you cut by hand is to spend time working the butter into the flour WITH your hands – that is inefficient and risks softening the butter.
Guideline 4 – This is a brilliant idea courtesy, once again, to the indefatigable test cooks at America’s Test Kitchen – this solves the variability of the water addition once and for all. Instead of using 1/4 to 1/2 cup of ice-cold water – always use 1/2 cup of a mixture that is equal parts water and 80 proof vodka (ice-cold). The overall quantity of liquid here insures that the dough comes together well and is easy to handle but the alcohol doesn’t trigger the gluten formation in the flour – then, as the crust bakes, the alcohol from the vodka evaporates and leaves a flaky crust that doesn’t toughen as it cooks.
Guideline 5 – Separate your flour (+ salt + sugar) into two parts – roughly 2/3 and 1/3 each. Remember that the goal of cutting fat into flour is twofold: coating flour with fat and coating chunks of fat with flour. By separating the incorporation of flour, you can assert greater control over both desirable outcomes. Initially process the greater potion of the flour with your butter and shortening until much of the butter is visibly dissipated into the flour and only your pea-sized lumps remain. Then toss-in the remainder of the flour and pulse a few additional times. The first pairing of flour and fat insures that plenty of flour is coated with plenty of fat and cuts-down the cold solid fat to flaky-layer-producing-sized chunks. The second addition of flour to the mix insures that the undissipated fat gets adequately coated with flour.
Guideline 6 – HANDS OFF! You can’t get through all the mixing and rolling without touching the dough some. But realistically, you should be able to work your way through almost all of the pie crust process with only brief direct contact with the dough. By brief, I mean that you should be able to make the magic happen with less than 20 seconds of hand-to-dough contact total.
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Part 2 – Pie Crust – A visual tour of mixing and rolling.
1 1/2 cups AP flour + 1 tsp. salt + 2 Tbsp. sugar (I used turbinado sugar)
Blended – 2 seconds.
12 Tbsp. butter + 8 Tbsp. shortening – refrigerated.
Cold butter and shortening transferred to food processor.
After 10-15 pulses – look for pea-sized chunks of butter.
Additional 1 cup flour added.
After 5-10 more pulses – still have small chunks of butter visible but additional flour is now fully integrated.
Ingredients transferred from processor bowl to bowl that held butter and shortening (still cold).
My pie-crust special water bottle – I fill it with a mixture that is 1/2 water and 1/2 vodka and keep it in my refrigerator.
1/2 cup of my water/vodka mixture.
Liquid poured over other ingredients.
Use a spatula to briefly stir and press ingredients to integrate liquid.
Everything dumped onto counter – it has taken me less than 2 minutes to get to this point and I haven’t touched the dough with my hands.
Here, I have used my hands briefly (10 seconds) to bring the dough into a ball.
Cutting the ball in half – one side slightly larger than the other side (the larger side will be used for the bottom crust). You can still see chunks of butter in the face of the slice.
Flatten each half into a thick disk – wrap in plastic wrap – refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
I roll-out my dough between sheets of parchment – here I have placed the larger disk on a heavily floured sheet of parchment and heavily floured the top of the disk.
Roll from the center out to the edge – try to maintain a disk shape.
Rolled-out dough – you can see the flattened chunks of butter here – that is a good predictor of flakiness.
Pie dough transferred to pie plate.
For the top of a pie, I cheat on making a lattice – instead of cutting and weaving strips, I extract a network of small circles from my top crust.
Leftover dough divots.
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Part 3 – Pie Crust – A few final thoughts.
I spent the last two posts exposing the imperfections of relying on volumetric measures for dry ingredients – yet here I am celebrating a recipe that depends solely on such a system of measures.
What is amazing here is that this recipe and approach are very robust relative to the actual weight of the flour that goes into the recipe. What I mean by that is that the recipe turns out reliable crusts through a wide range of flour weights – which is great since using volumetric measures for flours will always give you a wide range of weights. But like I said in the introduction to this post, I believe that everyone should be able to construct a fail proof pie crust using only the archaic measuring cup. A personal opinion, yes, but I’ll always stand by that opinion.
This recipe and approach, however, are NOT really robust relative to the amounts of fat and liquid used to make the dough. As such, I don’t recommend getting experimental with the recipe. Pie crusts don’t respond well to experimentation. Save your creativity for something else. For pie crust, I firmly believe that once you get it right, you shouldn’t tempt fate and risk failure. Let’s make risking failure a thing of the past.
What you’ll get in return is peace of mind. Sometimes creativity and dependability are at odds with one another. In this case the peace of mind comes from dependability. Dependability to turn-out flawless flaky pie crusts every time. Dependability that you can cut the amounts in half to make a single crust; dependability that you can double the amounts to make two double crusts. Dependability meaning that you have a recipe for a very desirable outcome that is truly reproducible.
Finally, let me remind you one more time to: (1) use cold fat (butter/shortening), (2) integrate the fat into the flour in two stages, (3) use vodka in your liquid, (4) work quickly, & (5) keep your hands off the dough (almost) completely.
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Part 4 – Fruit Pie – This is what happens when a flawless pie crust meets a mega-simple berry pie filling recipe.
As much time as I have spent in the kitchen around EXTREMELY sharp knives, I have never cut myself while slicing and dicing. My culinary arch-enemies are the vegetable peeler and the cheese grater – I have exacted more wear and (especially) tear on my hands with these two devices than with all other kitchen tools combined. Having shared that with you, I’ll ask you to forgive me for avoiding the construction of an apple pie here. What might seem un-American is better described as an act of self-preservation.
Rather than using apples as my go-to fruit for pies, I like to use bags of frozen fruit. Peaches, blueberries, cherries, mixed fruit (blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries). The wonderful thing about frozen fruit is that there is always a consistency in quality and it turns out that frozen fruit is ALWAYS in season.
Fruit pies are insanely simple to construct. The ingredients list is short: fruit, sugar, lemon, thickener, and maybe some spice.
Here are the basic proportions I use for a fruit pie:
Frozen Fruit – 30 – 32 oz. (three 10 oz. bags or two 16 oz. bags)
Sugar – 5 oz. (about 3/4 cup)
Lemon – Juice of 1 Whole Lemon
Thickener – 3 Tbsp. Instant Tapioca (not pearl tapioca – INSTANT tapioca)
Spice – Conservatively and Appropriately
You simply mix all the ingredients together and allow it to sit for about an hour then spoon it into your crust. Cover with a top crust and bake at 375° for 50-60 minutes until you can see the fruit bubbling through the top crust.
Here’s my construction of a peach pie:
32 oz. frozen peaches with other ingredients – 5 oz. sugar (a mix of organic and turbinado ) – a juiced lemon – cinnamon and nutmeg.
Everything mixed together – I added about 1/4 tsp. of freshly grated nutmeg + about 1 tsp. cinnamon – nutmeg and cinnamon go well with peaches.
Stirred occasionally to re-integrate everything, this is my fruit mix after about an hour.
Spooned evenly into bottom crust.
Thin slices of butter distributed over the top of the fruit mixture.
Covered with top crust (note small breach in lower left corner – my bad).
Here is my technique – I use a fork to press the two crusts together and to cut off the crust that extends beyond the edge of the pie plate.
Folding the crust edge back on itself and tucking it under the edge of the assembled pie.
Look ma…no fluted edge. I’ll address the fluted edge hysteria below.
Second view of the edge detail. Note – I sprinkled some sugar over the top of the pie before baking – a very nice added touch.
Baked pie – 375° F for about 60 minutes – top crust beginning to brown and cooked fruit bubbling up through the holes.
Peach pie – incredibly delicious.
Here’s my construction of a blueberry pie:
30 ounces of frozen blueberries – weighed-out from a 5 lb. bag I have.
Added about 5 oz. sugar – again a mix of organic and turbinado.
Added the juice of a whole lemon + about 1 Tbsp. of combined orange and lemon zest + 3 Tbsp. instant tapioca. Citrus zest goes well with berries.
Detail of ingredients.
Stir and allow to sit for about 1 hour.
Bottom crust.
Filled and topped with thin slices of butter.
Top crust.
Covered fruit.
Forked trim.
Aha – a lovely scalloped edge – I’m just looking’ for trouble here.
Such a nice job on this – too bad I’m headed for an epic fail.
Baked at 375° F for about 55 minutes – crust beginning to brown – fruit bubbling through the top. Unfortunately, the exposed scalloped crust looks like fried chicken. Sigh. This can usually be avoided by removing the pie through part of the cooking and covering the edge with foil – I always wind up fracturing the edge when I do this so I have decided to go with the tucked crust method instead.
Blueberry Pie.
Extra bonus illustration – a mixed berry and cherry pie – I started this pie with about 32 oz. of a mixture of blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and cherries. I also used about 1 Tbsp. of orange/lemon zest.
Mixed Berries Pie.
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Part 5 – Quiche – This is what happens when a flawless pie crust meets a simple and universal quiche recipe.
As I mentioned above, this pie crust recipe works equally well when cut in half, for a single crust pie, and when doubled, for two double crust pies. Since I had always been plagued with problems making a single crust before I adopted this recipe, I shied away from making quiche. Now that I have the crust figured out, quiche is in my arsenal of dinner treats once again.
First of all, some background.
Quiche is, technically, a custard – a cooked mixture of eggs and dairy (cream, half-and-half, whole milk). Most ice creams and puddings are sweetened custards that are cooked on the stove. Cheesecake is a sweetened custard that is baked in an oven. Quiche is an unsweetened baked custard.
When eggs and dairy are combined and heated, the protein from the eggs coagulates and begins to thicken the mixture. The secret to controlling the texture of a custard is careful heating for temperature control – if too much heat is applied or if the heat is applied too aggressively, the eggs curdle (i.e. form curds – a.k.a. scramble) and the satiny custard doesn’t form.
Conventional quiche custard wisdom suggests: (1) using equal parts of cream and whole milk for the dairy, & (2) using 1 egg for every 1/2 cup of dairy.
In my own experience, I have always favored shallow quiches – primarily because it is easier to control the temperature of the components during cooking when the quiche is thin than it is when the quiche is thick. In a thick quiche, it is difficult to insure that the interior of the quiche is cooked while keeping the exterior regions in an appropriate temperature range. Nobody wants a big quiche that is raw in the center and scrambled around the edges.
Here is my generic guideline for constructing a shallow quiche.
Dough for a single crust – 1/2 of the recipe I used for the two crust pie
Custard – 3/4 cup cream + 3/4 cup milk + 3 eggs (or my variation: 2 whole eggs + 2 egg yolks)
Seasoning – 1 tsp. salt + 1/2 tsp. white pepper + 1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg
Filling – 1 cup cooked meat + up to 1 cup mild shredded cheese + (optional) up to 1 cup cooked savory stuff
Note – Any meat or savory/vegetable components that go into the quiche must be fully cooked first. The heat used to bake the quiche will NOT be sufficient to cook anything besides the custard.
The filling for the quiche can be just about anything: bacon and onion with Gruyere cheese, ham and asparagus with swiss cheese, sautéed spinach and mushroom and leek with Havarti cheese, crab with mozzarella cheese and a touch of chive (my personal favorite).
Quiche is ALMOST as straightforward as “pour-and-bake” – in fact, the only component that needs any special consideration is the crust. Quiches don’t bake for very long – not long enough for the crust to cook completely. Before using constructing your quiche in a crust, the crust needs to be partially baked.
Let me run through the process of getting from a lump of pie dough to a cooked quiche.
Roll-out your single crust dough to fit in your shallow pie pan – trim the edges.
Carefully fold the trimmed edges back between the side of the crust and the side of the pie-tin.
The edge of the crust should look like this when you’re done.
Cover your crust with foil or parchment – fitted to the bottom and edges of the dough – and weight the center down with pie weights.
Bake in a 375° F oven for 15 minutes – remove the weights and foil/parchment and bake for another 15 minutes.
Quiche fixin’s – partially baked crust – custard mixed – crab – cheese – salt – pepper – nutmeg – dried chives.
8 oz. crab distributed evenly on the bottom.
About 1 cup of shredded mozzarella cheese on top of the crab.
Seasoned custard and chives carefully poured over the other ingredients – you might have some custard leftover – don’t overfill.
Baked for 30-35 minutes at 375° F. Test one for doneness: a knife inserted into the quiche about 1″ from the edge will come-out clean.
Test two for doneness: the interior of the quiche should register between 170°-180° F – if the temperature exceeds 185° F, you risk having the custard curdle.
Detail.
One generous slice – 1/4 of the whole quiche. If you look carefully, you can see the lumps of crabmeat surrounded by the cooked custard which looks like an ivory pudding.
Here’s another quiche – 8 oz. cooked bacon + 1 small onion sautéed + 1 cup of smoked Gouda cheese + a little bit of dried chive.
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