Scale or measure all ingredients. Chill or freeze the Fats.The Biscuit Method/Pie Variation
Despite the fact that it’s as simple as the day is long, pie crust remains the Cerebus of the baking world. Many beginners take one gander at it, turn tail, and run. That’s because so many of the crucial points of action are described by words that just don’t mean a heck of a lot. There are a lot of “just enoughs” and “not too muches” and other verbal voodoos that can ruin your day. Some of that goes with the territory, I suppose, but if you pay close attention, you shouldn’t have to go at it more than three times before you nail it.
The Biscuit Method/Pie Variation
Scale or measure all ingredients. Chill or freeze the Fats.
Spin the Dry Goods in a food processor, 3 to 4 pulses.
Add the chilled fats to the food processor and pulse Fat into the Dry Goods.
Spritz on just enough Liquid for the dough to hold together when squeezed in a fist.
Form into disc, place in 1-gallon ziptop bag, and refrigerate.
Roll out in bag.
Bake according to the recipe’s instructions.
Tips
Butter should be frozen, but shortening just needs to be chilled to form a solid.
I put my liquid in a plastic spritz bottle. This makes it easier to control the amount of liquid added and to get even coverage.
And I always roll in a zip-top bag. Just know that in order to remove the dough, you’ll need to cut the side seams on the bag.
A pie dough comes together exactly like a biscuit only there is very, very little liquid and no leavening involved. Other than that, the same rules apply. My best advice: handle the dough as little as possible. It’s no coincidence that folks who make good biscuits tend to make equally good pie dough.
Hardware:
Digital scale
Dry measuring cups
Wet measuring cups
Measuring spoons
Food processor
Spritz bottle
Large zip-top bag
Sheet pan or cookie sheet
2 matching 9-inch pie tins
Rolling pin
Paring knife
Kitchen fork
Parchment paper
Approximately 32 ounces dried beans
Cooling rack
You can use shortening, but your dough won’t be as flavorful or flaky.
You won’t need nearly all of this water, but if you try to put any less in the spritz bottle it’s a pain to get out. I usually fill my bottle one-third full and drop in some crushed ice.
Cut the butter and lard into small pieces and stash them in the freezer while you amass the rest of the hardware and software.
Take the flour and salt for a spin in your food processor (3 to 4 quick pulses should do the trick).
Add the butter and pulse 8 to 10 times, until the mixture looks uniformly lumpy.
Add the lard and pulse another 5 to 7 times. (The goal here is to wind up with very small pieces of butter and somewhat bigger pieces of lard.)
Remove the lid of the food processor and spritz the surface of the mixture with just enough H20 to uniformly moisten. Replace the lid and pulse 3 more times.
Wait about 30 seconds, spritz, and pulse 3 times again. (What’s the goal here? To have the mixture hold its shape when squeezed together, while using as little of the water as possible. Most novice pie makers end up using far too much water, which leads to a tough pie crust.)
Drop the mixture into a large zip-top bag and use the plastic to shape the mix into a disk about 5 inches across. Seal the bag and refrigerate for half an hour.
(Despite what many cookbooks say, the point of this “rest” is not to relax the gluten—it’s to allow time for the flour particles to hydrate, that is, soak up the surrounding moisture, thus softening the dough and making it easier to roll out. So don’t skip this step, okay? Oh, the reason this is done in the refrigerator rather than on the counter is that you want the fat to stay firm—in a semisolid state throughout.)
Place an oven rack in position C and preheat the oven to 425°F.
When you retrieve the dough from the chill chest, stash a sheet pan or cookie sheet in the freezer along with 2 matching pie tins.
Now, lay the bag containing the dough disk on the counter, open the bag, reach in, and scoot the dough disk to the middle. Then roll it—that’s right, inside the bag—until the disk is roughly 10 to 12 inches across. The best way to do this is to roll from the center straight out, then rotate the bag 10 minutes and repeat. (Yes, you may draw a clock face on the bag if you really need to.) Once you’ve worked your way all the way around a couple of times, you should have a relatively uniform sheet.
Fetch the pan from the freezer and slide the dough, still in the bag, onto it. Aluminum is a mighty fine conductor, so it’ll suck any heat out of the dough lickety-split, thus keeping the fats inside in a solid state.
Now is the time for the bag to throw itself on your sword. Use a paring knife to cut the bag down one side, then the other so that you can peel back the part that covers the dough.
Bring hither the chilly pie plates.
Place one of the plates (right side up) on top of the dough. Holding this pan in place, slide your other hand under the baking sheet and flip the whole thing over. Now take the sheet away and you should be looking at a piece of dough lying across an inverted pie pan. Carefully peel back the remaining plastic bag half covering the dough.
Place the other pan (inverted) on top of the dough and push gently downward. You should now have one pie dough sandwiched between two pie tins that are both facing down. Odds are good there will be at least an inch of pie dough sticking out of this union all the way around. Use your paring knife to trim the ragged edge away, leaving a half inch of dough all the way around, if possible.
Carefully flip the whole thing back over again.
Remove pan number 1 and—behold—a perfect pie dough perfectly positioned in a pie plate.
Note: This isn’t nearly as hard to do as it is to read. That’s why there are pictures.
Now even though we went as light on the water as we could, there is still moisture in this dough, and when it faces the heat of the oven it will turn to steam. That steam could push our dough skyward. The solution? Docking.
I have no idea why they call it docking because it’s got nothing to do with any of the connotations I associate with that word. In pastry parlance to dock means “to poke full of holes.” (One of my earliest memories in life is when I “docked” my dad’s Naugahyde recliner with a drill bit I’d found in the garage.) So, take a regular ol’ fork and poke the crust bottom 6 to 8 times. That should do the job.
Cover the pie with a 13 x 13-inch piece of parchment paper and fill with the dry beans…just to make sure the dough remains flat. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove the parchment and beans and continue baking until golden, 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and place on a rack to cool completely before filling.
Yield: One 9-inch pie crust
This is my favorite kind of pie to make because it requires no pie pan. Although this is technically a galette, or free-form tart, this here’s America, and in America we eat apple pie, gosh darn it. Besides, I’ve never had any patience for lattice-top pies. This is far more satisfying, and the traditional cheddar cheese is built in. If the inclusion of vinegar seems odd, trust me when I say it brings more than potato chips to the party.
Hardware:
Digital scale
Dry measuring cups
Wet measuring cups
Measuring spoons
Peeler
Chef’s knife
Cutting board
Box grater
Whisk
Large cast-iron skillet
Wooden spoon
Food processor
Spritz bottle
Sheet pan or cookie sheet
Rolling pin
Pastry brush
Cooling rack
Mix the apple juice and the ice water and pour into a spritzer bottle.
Assemble the dough via the BISCUIT METHOD/PIE VARIATION, incorporating the butter in 2 doses and using only as much of the juice/water combination as necessary.
Warm a cast-iron skillet over medium heat. Add the apples to the pan and toss for 2 minutes.
Add the vinegar and stir for 30 seconds.
Add the sugar and cook until the apples have softened, 2 to 3 minutes.
Add the nutmeg, cinnamon, and butter and allow the butter to melt slowly.
Fold in the cheddar and remove from the heat.
Sprinkle on the flour and stir to combine well.
Cool to room temperature.
While the apple mixture is cooling, place an oven rack in position C and preheat the oven to 400°F.
Roll the dough into a 1/4-inch-thick disk. Don’t worry about getting it perfectly round. Carefully roll it up onto the rolling pin and transfer it to the baking sheet.
Place the pound cake pieces in the middle of the dough, leaving a 3-inch margin of crust on all sides.
Spoon the apple mixture over the pound cake and top the apples with the cubed butter. Lift the excess crust onto the filling and repeat in a clockwise fashion until a top lip has formed around the edge of the whole pie. Brush the pie with the egg wash and sprinkle the crust with the sugar.
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the filling begins to bubble and the crust is golden brown.
Remove the pie from the sheet pan immediately and place on a rack to cool. Serve at room temperature.
Yield: One 12-inch free-form pie
This pie crust is—as its name says—savory, and very flavorful. Blind-baked, it’s the perfect construction platform for a quiche or any other savory pie, or you could use it to make the Apple, Fennel, and Onion Pie here.
Hardware:
Digital scale
Dry measuring cups
Wet measuring cups
Measuring spoons
Food processor
Spritz bottle
Large zip-top bag
Sheet pan or cookie sheet
2 matching 9-inch pie tins
Rolling pin
Paring knife
Kitchen fork
Parchment paper
Approximately 32 ounces dried beans
Cooling rack
Assemble the dough via the BISCUIT METHOD/PIE VARIATION, adding the Parmesan to the Dry Goods just before you add the Liquid.
Roll and blind-bake the dough for a traditional pie crust following the step-by-step instructions here.
Yield: Two 9-inch pie crusts
Peaches are my favorite fruit, hands down…and I love cooking with rhubarb because it’s poison. Well, the leaves contain oxalates, a kind of poison. But don’t worry, the rhubarb we eat comes from the stem and has been completely cleared for human consumption. Anyway, this is my favorite cobbler of all time. Don’t eat it all at one sitting because it gets better with age.
Hardware:
8 x 8-inch glass baking dish
Digital scale
Dry measuring cups
Measuring spoons
Chef’s knife
Cutting board
Food processor
Spritz bottle
Medium mixing bowl
Serving spoon
Using the frozen fruit right out of the freezer is the secret to keeping their flavorful juice—and the extra dough on the top and bottom soaks up the juices.
Place an oven rack in position C and preheat the oven to 375°F. Butter the baking dish.
Assemble the dough via the BISCUIT METHOD/PIE VARIATION and place it in the refrigerator while you put the fruit together.
To make the fruit, in a medium bowl whisk together the sugar, cornstarch, and salt, then add the peaches, rhubarb, and lime juice.
Remove the dough from the refrigerator, cut it in half, then pinch off walnut-sized pieces from half of the dough and drop the pieces onto the bottom of the prepared dish.
Top the dough that’s on the baking dish with the fruit mixture, then drop the remaining half of the dough randomly, in big spoonfuls, on top of the fruit.
Bake, uncovered, for 1 1/4 hours, until the dough is cooked through and starting to turn golden, then place under the broiler for 3 minutes just to brown the top. (You can use a toothpick to check for doneness here, just be careful not to poke through to the fruit. And if you can lift it up from below with a spatula and the dough is solid, you’re good to go.)
Remove from the broiler and let stand for 15 minutes before serving.
Yield: Serves 6 to 8, unless I’m one of the diners—then it serves 3
A savory twist on the free-form pie, very nice alongside a salad or a bowl of soup.
Hardware:
Digital scale
Dry measuring cups
Wet measuring cups
Measuring spoons
Chef’s knife
Cutting board
Food processor
Spritz bottle
Rolling pin
Sheet pan or cookie sheet
Parchment paper
Pastry brush
Cooling rack
Place an oven rack in position C and preheat the oven to 375°F.
Assemble the ingredients of the Savory Pie Crust recipe (see here) via the BISCUIT METHOD/PIE VARIATION.
To make the free-form crust, roll the dough into a 1/4-inch-thick disk. Don’t worry about getting it perfectly round. Carefully roll it up onto the rolling pin and transfer it to the baking sheet.
Spread the mustard in the center of the dough.
Randomly but evenly disperse the wedges of apple, fennel, and onion.
Sprinkle the top with the thyme.
Fold the excess crust onto the filling and repeat in a clockwise fashion until a top lip has formed around the edge of the whole tart (see the illustration here).
Brush the tart with the melted butter and bake for 50 to 55 minutes, or until the crust is golden and the filling is soft.
Yield: Serves 6 to 8
