A savory baked good can be every bit as much of a treat as a sweet pie or cake, and many of the recipes that follow are so ridiculously easy to make and to customize that you’ll find yourself returning to them again and again. The techniques are, by and large, exactly the same as the ones you use in sweet baking; differences are only in the ingredients lists.
Many of these dishes have two equally important components: the batter or crust and the filling or topping. For most, you can lift the filling from one and drop it into the crust of another, so you wind up with far more ideas than you bargained for; see the chart above for guidance. Also, Savory Piecrust (this page) and Savory Tart Crust are interchangeable, and for any open-faced pie or tart (without a top crust) you can also feel free to sub in Hash Brown Potato Crust. Or follow the method for Spinach-Cheese Pie (page 528) for a phyllo crust instead.
You want a deep pie plate here so you can maximize the amount of the hearty fillings. If you don’t have one, a 10-inch cast-iron skillet, a springform pan, or even a deep 2-quart casserole dish is a good substitute. Or you can assemble the pie in your regular pie dish and plan to have a little extra filling; bake that in ramekins topped with scraps of piecrust.