Your senses, your ability to touch, to smell, and to see, are among your best assets in pie baking. That’s why I urge you to make dough by hand, so you know how it feels when it’s just right. Similarly, open the oven door and take a quick glance at a pie as it bakes, and notice how it looks and smells, so you can remember the toasty aroma of a fully baked crust, or the aroma of sweet, bubbling juices. When you are comfortable making pies, your own good judgment is often a better gauge than time and temperature.
Pastry Blender
When I make a pie crust, I like to get my hands right into the shortening and flour and blend them together with my fingers. If you are uncomfortable doing that, a pastry blender will also do the job. This hand-held tool is made of parallel strands of horseshoe-shaped wires, anchored on both ends by a wooden or plastic handle. By repeatedly plunging the pastry blender into the ingredients as you move it about and rotate the bowl, you use the wires, rather than your fingers, to blend the shortening into the flour.
Rolling Pin
For rolling out pie dough, a rolling pin is almost essential, but you don’t need to spend a mint to get one that’s right for the job. I have several, and my favorite is a 20-inch-long piece of ordinary wooden doweling, about 1¼ inches in diameter, available at any lumberyard or hardware store. If you want a pin with handles, a wooden one with a roller about 10 inches long (that’s not including the handles) will do the job. If you opt for a large, heavy, professional-size pin (up to 30 inches long and weighing 4 to 5 pounds), with or without handles, be sure your work area allows you ample room to maneuver, because you’ll need a generous space to handle such a pin.
Pie Pans
Pie pans are alternately known as pie plates and pie dishes. My assortment, like my rolling pin collection, is large. My favorites are clear glass (Pyrex) pans. They measure 9 inches across—that’s from inside rim to inside rim—and 1¼ inches deep, with a liquid capacity of 4 cups. Prebaked pie shells and filled crusts brown nicely in them. In fact, I have found glass pans to be good insurance against a soggy bottom crust—not a perfect answer, but the easiest solution. Glass is also a snap to clean. Each recipe in this book was prepared in such a pan.
Sturdy metal pans with a shiny aluminum or brushed silver surface bake well enough, and they are indestructible, but crusts don’t brown quite as well in them. Disposable aluminum pans are passable, especially if you have lots of pies to make for a party, but you should stack two of them together: They are flimsy otherwise and can buckle when you move a filled pie, and a sharp knife can also slice right through the pan when cutting.
Whichever type of pan you use, the diameter and capacity can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, regardless of what the label says. To be certain, get out a ruler and a measuring cup, and gauge both for yourself.
Rolling Surface
The surface on which you roll out pie dough can be just about anything, as long as it is smooth, flat, clean, and cool. I use a large wooden board or an acrylic cutting slab. Formica and granite countertops are also good work surfaces. A polished marble slab is dandy for all kinds of pastry work, but is awfully weighty and expensive if you are baking pies only occasionally.
Wire Whisks
I find whisks essential, both for stirring together dry ingredients in the most thorough way without sifting, and for the smoothest blending of cream and custard fillings, in either a mixing bowl or a saucepan. One or two whisks, about 12 inches long and with a network of looped wires 2 to 2½ inches wide, are plenty for your pie-making needs.
Some cooks are comfortable using a massive hand-held “balloon” whisk and a substantial amount of their own elbow grease for whipping several egg whites for chiffon fillings and meringue toppings. But I consider that too much work and prefer to depend on electricity.
Beaters
A heavy-duty stand-type electric mixer is rarely essential in pie making, but it is extremely useful for mixing up cookie and bread doughs and cake batters. A heavy, powerful machine with a dough hook, paddle, and whip attachments and a deep, rounded bowl will likely carry a hefty price tag, but it will give you a lifetime of service in return.
A portable hand-held electric mixer is a godsend for whipping large amounts of cream and beating egg whites for meringue. It works anywhere there’s an outlet, and you can stick it in a drawer when you are done, so it doesn’t take up any counter space. It is well worth the reasonable cost, but look around and ask friends what they use, because a higher price does not always indicate a better mixer.
A hand-held rotary beater, known more nostalgically as an eggbeater or a Dover beater, is indispensable for whipping up a small amount of cream or a couple of eggs or egg whites, especially if you don’t have a hand-held electric mixer.
Measuring Cups
Dry ingredients, particularly flour, should be measured evenly and consistently. For that, it’s helpful to have a graduated, stacked set of “dry” measuring cups, in ¼-, ⅓-, ½-, and 1-cup sizes. They should have straight sides and level tops, and it doesn’t matter whether they are made of plastic or metal. As I describe later in the section on flour, you can “scoop and level” these cups for even measurements.
Liquids are easier to measure in cups with graduated markings on the side and a spout for nondribble pouring. Get glass or translucent plastic so you can read the cups from the outside, at eye level. You’ll find the 1- and 2-cup sizes especially useful. A 4-cup measure is not only good for measuring,