These little ceramic beads go into your foil-lined prebake to help hold the crust in place so it will not melt down into a puddle of butter and flour. You can easily use beans instead of beads, but the beads are pretty handy to have around.
Wood is more forgiving and lightweight to move around, but marble is great for its ability to remain cool and for its nice smooth surface—we think it’s a matter of preference and kitchen storage space.
There are a few types on the market; we really like the old-fashioned handheld paper-punch style, but we also recently discovered the mason-jar-lid style—it’s a stamp-down punch that is affixed to the lid of a mason jar (photo opposite), and we love it.
We find the fastest way to prep apples for pies is to use a hand-crank peeler. It costs about twenty dollars and can cut apple prep time in half. We prefer the thin slices it creates, instead of wedges.
We recommend a fine-bristled silicone pastry brush with a metal handle. This style is easy to wash and will not fall apart.
The pizza cutter is our favorite tool for cutting lattice. We don’t see the point of messing with anything else, and it’s also handy to have around for cutting pizza.
This one is sort of obvious. Having a timer is necessary for baking custards; 1 minute too long can make all the difference in texture and can result in cracking and overbrowning. Fruit pies are a lot more forgiving and give good visual cues as to when they are done if you pay attention, but you still want to keep a timer on them for rotation from the bottom of the oven to the top.
We don’t keep a lot of fancy knives in our kitchen, really just the basics: a good 8- to 10-inch chef’s knife, a decent long-blade serrated knife (or bread knife), and a variety of small paring knives. Victorinox makes quality kitchen knives at an affordable price with easy-to-clean handles. We are guilty of letting our knives get shamefully dull, but we are lucky to have our friend and neighborhood knife maker Joel Bukiewicz of Cut Brooklyn rescue us—he sharpens our knives for us in return for a double espresso or a slice of pie. If you are looking to invest in an outstanding, one-of-a-kind, handmade knife, you must visit his shop or his website: www.cutbrooklyn.com.