Pastry-handy dopers, help me bake a pie!

Cafe Society
1

After my many adventures in the world of cookies, I decided to take advantage of the incredible blueberries that are now in season and take a shot at my first pie. Crust and all. I’ve got all the ingredients, and am going to do it tomorrow. Also, a friend of mine is selling everything she owns prior to moving out of state, so today I scored a marble rolling pin for five bucks, all the more incentive! The thing weighs about twenty pounds, I can’t wait to roll out that crust. I hope it’s okay to use a marble rolling pin to roll out pie crust?

Any good tips (and/or favorite crust or filling recipes) for a first-time pie baker?

2

No recipe tips here (I’d have to get my girlfriend for that - she’s the Pie Crust Queen - but she’s watching a movie). However, you definitely want to put a cookie sheet covered in aluminum foil on the rack underneath your pie pan to avoid a smoking, bubbling, flaming mass of blueberry goo on the bottom of your oven.

3

Oh. Um, thanks. It’s things like this I tend to learn the hard way.

4

First big tip to you for your pie crust: keep everything cold. That will help keep your crusts tender and flaky. Here’s a good basic dough that will give you enough for a 9" double crust:

2 1/2 cups AP flour
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbs. sugar
12 Tbs. Butter, cut into 1/2" pieces, chilled
8 Tbs. Shortening, chilled
6-8 Tbs. ice water

Combine all the dry ingredients together, and using a pastry blender, cut in the butter and shortening until the flour is starting to get the texture of cornmeal with about half about the size of peas. Using a rubber spatula, start adding the water a tablespoon at a time, and fold the dough together until it sticks together. It’s ok if there’s patches of flour and butter–this is a good thing. Only handle the dough just enough to stick it together. Kneading pie dough will give you a tough crust. You don’t want it to be a smooth dough like a cookie batter. Remove dough from bowl, divide into 2 equal parts, press into discs, and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill for an hour before rolling out.

For the blueberry filling:

6 cups blueberries
3/4 cup sugar
3-4 Tbs. tapioca (uncooked instant–You can get it in your pudding section at the market, Minute Rice sells it in a little red box. Use less if you like your pie juicier, more if you want a more firm filling)
2 tsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. grated lemon zest
1/4 tsp nutmeg

Combine all of above and toss in a bowl, and set aside while you roll out your dough.

Preheat your oven to 400.

Roll out your dough to fit the pie plate, fill, and seal with top layer of dough. Cut some vents on top, and if you want your crust to look really pretty, you can brush some beaten egg or heavy cream on top, and sprinkle a little sugar on the dough.

At this point, I like to stick my pie in the freezer for about 10-15 minutes, especially if it’s warm and the dough has softened, before putting into the oven (but it’s not necessary).

Place your pie onto a baking sheet, and bake at 400 for about 20-25 minutes. Reduce oven temp to 350, and continute to bake until the juices are bubbling and the crust is a golden brown, about 30-40 minutes.

Let it cool on a rack until room temperature, about 2 hours, before cutting, so the juices have time to thicken.

5

I’m just going to add a comment to JavaMaven’s excellent post.

You can also combine the ingredients in a food processor, don’t over work it, pulse quickly just until it comes together.

6

Java’s post should get you through nicely.

The most important thing to remember about your crust is to handle it as little as possible. The more mixing and smooshing you do, the tougher the crust will be. Freezing it beforehand is a good idea, because the colder the crust is when you put it into the oven, the flakier it will be.

Make sure you roll out your crusts at least an inch over-sized for the bottom, and two inches for the top. When you’re sealing the top and bottom crust together tuck the extra crust from the top underneath the excess bottom crust before you do your fluting. This will give it a nice tight seal that won’t leak.

Final tip, I always take a piece of tin foil large enough to cover the pie, fold it in half, and then cut a circle out of the center (think cutting out heart shapes back in elementary school). This will lave you with a circular “frame” you can drop over your pie and fold over the edges. Leave it on for all but the last 15 minutes or so of baking, and your fluting will stay moist and pretty instead of overbaking and shriveling up.

Good Luck!

7

Thanks everybody! I’m getting all my crust ingredients chilled–one article I read said if you stick the dry ingredients in the freezer for a while it helps keep the dough cool while putting it together. I don’t have a pastry blender or a food processor, I was told I could use two knives to chop the butter in?

8

Definitely. Just use two thin, sharp knives and keep them parallel and pull them away from each other as you cut. Just like cutting spaghetti.
Although if you’re at the grocery for ingredients anyway, most kitchen item areas have them for less than $4-5 if you’re interested.

9

Hmm, I’m having a hard time picturing this.

Pastry blenders?

10

A pastry blender is a little hand-held kitchen gadget…I don’t know how to describe it well, but they should run $4-5 or so and make it much easier to blend the fat and flour for operaitons like this than 2 knives do, IMO. Let me see if I can find a photo…

11

Oh, also the pie article I’ve got says:

But her recipe calls for six cups of berries, which looks like a whole lot more than will evenly fill the pie pan–and the step-by-step photos show a rounded pile of berries, and an uncooked top crust that’s certainly higher than the rim of the pan. Does she mean the final cooked filling shouldn’t go higher than the rim of the pan, but that it’s okay for the uncooked filling to do so?

12

Pastry blender (I hope this lik works!):

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.kitchen-classics.com/_borders/pastryblend.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.kitchen-classics.com/pastry.htm&h=207&w=183&sz=21&tbnid=vv0O7D8s2dEJ:&tbnh=99&tbnw=88&start=3&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%22pastry%2Bblender%22%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DG

13

Oh! One of these little guys. When “blender” was mentioned, I was picturing a stand mixer or something. I’ve gotta run to the store anyway for some vanilla bean icecream to eat with the finished product, so I’ll just go now and get a pastry blender, too. Thanks!

14

Although 6 cups of berries sounds like quite a bit, it will be enough to fill a 9" pie, with being slightly over the rim, but not overfilled.

A pastry blender will definitely help. Heck, I’ve used my hands before, too, but unless your hands are cold, you’ll melt the butter with the warmth of your skin.
I think the warning about too many berries is that some people will try to make a big mountain of berries, several inches above the rim. Thing is, that can be done with apples, so someone might reasonably conclude that you can do the same with berries. Not so, since apples are much less juicier than berries.

15

Oh, and I just wanted to say that the tapioca in the filling is very important. It soaks up all that excess juice that the berries will release during the baking process. I’ve shared this recipe (and its variants) with others, and I’ve had 2 who decided to skip the tapioca. Of course, I heard back that they ended up with “Berry Soup in a Crust”. :smiley:

16

Heh, I’d forgotten to pick it up last night when we did all our grocery shopping, so when I ran to the store just now for the pastry blender and ice cream, I went looking for it. Evidently, no one wants just a couple tablespoons of tapioca. I spent about ten minutes looking around for a box smaller than an amount capable of producing about thirty seven blueberry pies. It finally occurred to me that people buy boxes of tapioca to make, you know, pudding, and that I wasn’t going to find a smaller box ;).

17

Okay, so I’m partway through the process and it’s moderately successful so far. In mixing the dough, I followed the steps exactly until I got to the part where I sprinkled the ice water in. I put a quarter cup by tablespoons, mixing the whole time, and when I was done the thing said to separate it into halves, pat it into a flat ball, and roll it out. The dough wouldn’t stay together, just crumbled into little bits. So I ended up adding almost a half cup of water total, in order to get it to stick together enough for rolling.
I know I keep hearing to chill the dough down again before rolling, but the pie article pastry chef chick said not to unless it was getting warm, because then I’d be struggling to roll out a hard ball of cold dough and I’d end up overworking it. I managed to get the bottom crust in the pan, and that’s sitting in the 'fridge keeping cool. I stuck the rest of the dough in the freezer to cool again before I attempt making a top crust.

18

Well, 8 tablespoons is equal to a 1/2 cup, so you’re fine with that–you need just enough water that it sticks together. A little crumbling is fine and natural, though.

The reason why you need to let the dough rest, wrapped in plastic wrap, is not only just to make the dough cold, but you also need to let any gluten that’s been formed in making the dough itself rest. Gluten is the protein in flour that when moisture is added, and there is enough agitation to create strings of protein. In pie crust, you want a small amount of gluten–that will be enough to hold the dough together, but not be tough. Bread needs large amounts of gluten to create the webwork that lets bread rise and create that soft texture.

Letting the pie dough rest lets any gluten formed rest, also.

I understand what the ‘pastry chef pie chick’ is saying–you can overhandle the dough if you’re trying to roll out a hard chunk of dough. But, I’m able to work around that by letting the dough sit on the counter for a few minutes before rolling it out, if it’s too hard to roll.

One of the main reasons it’s important to keep your pie dough cold is that the little bits of cold butter, when put into a hot oven, creates steam, which will leaven the pie crust, and will create those all-important flakes. You don’t have any other leaveners in the dough such as eggs, yeast, baking powder, or baking soda, so you’re left to using the steam that’s created by cold, cold dough going into a hot oven (hence my reason for putting the pie in the freezer for a little bit before baking).

Keep up with the updates!

–Java, Ex-Pastry Chef. :smiley:

19

I put the pie together and let the whole thing chill for half an hour or so in the 'fridge. The pie chick said she likes to roll the dough and put the pie together, then chill the whole thing to let the gluten rest, rather than chilling the dough in a ball before rolling. So I think it’s the same idea, just in a different order. I had a hell of a time getting a 12-inch circle of dough for the top, and I think I spent way too much time messing with it trying to get it. Then, I let it rest in the freezer for fifteen minutes or so to chill it back down before working with it again, and when I put it together the 12-inch piece of dough was way too big anyway! Curses. I ended up cutting quite a bit off. Oh well. I packed it all down, tucked the edges under and fluted them, and cut some slits in the top, and stuck it in the 'fridge. I then remembered I’d forgotten the little chunks of butter she said to sprinkle around the top of the filling before putting the top crust on. Curses again.
The six cups I measured out ended up being a whole lot of berries–I wonder if my pie pan is smaller than nine inches? I had a full pie tin with a rounded top, about one inch higher than the tin in the middle, does that make sense? I still had some leftover, too. I packed it down as best I could, but it still seemed like an awful lot. I’m heating the oven now, and need to go brush it with eggs and such before putting it in!

20

Ok, that makes sense, since you put it that way. I’m just sorta anal about keeping my dough cold, so I make that extra step. :slight_smile:

It’s quite possible you have an 8" pie pan (especially since you mentioned rolling out to 12" and having quite a bit of dough left), since 8" and 9" are the two standard sizes. There is a tremendous difference in volume between the two.