Every time I see a good cook buy a packaged pie crust I want to grab it from the grocery basket and shout “Never!”
There are many tricks to just about guarantee a flaky pie crust. Pie crusts can be made in less than 15 minutes. If you have a food processor, you can cut that time in half.
I’m going to brag a little here: I make a decent pie crust. I think my pies turn out well because I refuse to get too excited about a tear or a slightly misshaped edge. Here are my top 10 tricks:
10. There’s nothing wrong with the recipe on the Crisco can. Crisco is the bête noire of the pie world and that’s an undeserved reputation.
9. The reason the Amish get credit for being the best pie-bakers in the country probably has a lot to do with using lard rather than shortening. Incorporating the lard into the flour, pate brisee style, gives a wonderful color and flakiness that is hard to beat. If you’re avoiding lard because you want to preserve your arteries, you better quit reading right now. Butter, margarine and shortening are just as lethal. The answer: eat less pie.
8. If you have not conquered your fear of rolling out a crust, then try the vinegar and beaten egg pie crust recipe that has been around for decades. The vinegar retards the formation of gluten strands and gives neurotic perfectionists more time to re-roll out the crust and patch tears. Rolling between two sheets of floured wax paper also helps build confidence.
7. The down side to using vinegar in a pie crust is that vinegar appears to inhibit browning. Sprinkling sugar or brushing an egg wash helps the appearance of a pale top crust.
6. Chill all your ingredients. Heat is the enemy of flakiness, so chill the rolling pin, too. Letting pastry “discs” rest in the fridge for a couple of hours before rolling out the crust is ideal.
5. Handle pie crust as little as possible and use a pastry cutter or your finger tips, but never warm palms. If you have a marble slab (or granite counter tops) dust the flour directly on the counter, rather than on a butcher block.
4. Use all-purpose or pastry flour, not bread flour. Bread flour ought to be high –gluten, which is usually a hard wheat flour. Gluten is great for chewiness, but not flakiness. And speaking of gluten and the growing numbers of gluten-intolerant, ever notice how there are no poor people who suffer from gluten intolerance?
3. Martha Stewart gets the credit for pastry crafted in a food processor. Pay attention when she says pulse the machine as few times as necessary to get coarse, bead-like globules of flour worked into the fat. Then add as little ice water as it takes to form a ball. Heat is the enemy, even when it comes from the friction of moving parts of a machine.
2. To avoid a soggy bottom crust, start your pie in a hot 425 F to 450 F degree oven for about 10 minutes, and then lower it to recipe recommendations. Undercook custard or pumpkin pies to avoid cracked surfaces. (They should jiggle ever so slightly because they’ll continue to cook when removed from the oven.)
1. Maybe the best tip of all? Substitute 1/3 cup of very chilled vodka for the water in your pie crust recipe. The alcohol inhibits gluten strand formation and it is tasteless when baked.
Leave the vodka on the counter. If the finished, rolled out pie crust looks like a map of Africa, pour what’s left in the bottle over ice and drink it slowly. Repeat as necessary.
Enjoy!
