I’ve said before that Fall is pie and pierogie season, and this year I am determined to make the perfect pie crust: one that is flaky and tender, and doesn’t shrink in the oven (which means I’m probably going to have to start doing rim embellishments). At my brother’s request, I’m doing a banana cream pie today.
For the first pie of 2011, I’m going to use Alton Brown’s pie crust recipe. It’s similar to others I’ve seen, and I trust everything that A.B. says (except when he emcees Iron Chef America, but that’s another story). The recipe requires:
3 oz. (6 tablespoons) butter, chilled
1 oz. (2 tablespoons) shortening, chilled (go for trans-fat free, like I did)
6 oz. (approximately 1 cup) all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling dough
1/2 tsp. table salt
1/4 c. ice water
After a lot of reading, I found that the colder the ingredients that go into a pie crust, the better off the pie crust is. Warmth melts the fat which makes the flour clumpy and turns out a tough crust. Cold dough means the fats melt in the oven and creates the flaky layers. I actually froze the butter and lard, and refrigerated the flour until i needed them. The pie plates were also frozen.
Flour and salt were processed with the butter and shortening until the flour clumped into pea-sized pieces.
The ice water was added a little at a time and processed until the dough held together. Here’s where I went wrong: I didn’t add enough water so that it held together well. When I squeezed a bunch in my hand, it was still rather sandy, but held together just enough that I thought it was done.
Sadly, when I was ready to roll the dough out after letting it set in the fridge for 45 minutes, it fell apart. It was so bad that I had no hesitation about putting the dough back in the food processor and adding more ice water (as quickly as possible), then putting it back into the fridge for another 45 minutes.
This probably had more to do with me being nervous than the recipe itself; whenever I second guess myself while cooking is when I screw up.
When I was ready to roll out the dough again, it was not a very smooth roll; edges frayed and the dough didn’t keep a semi-round shape no matter how often I turned it.
I actually had to do a lot of repairs on the crust, so many so that I had no chance to do embellishments.
And as you can see, the crust shrank in the over (425° for 12 minutes). I’m very disappointed by this. What can I do so this doesn’t happen again?
The filling turned out great, but the was so much of it! I used an English Cream Pie Filling, and even though I read the recipe and even went out to buy a half gallon of milk, I did not… exactly… understand how much custard I was making until I poured the milk into a saucepan and thought, “That seems like a lot even for two pies.” The upshot is: it was too much. Thank God we love pudding.
The topping was just whipped cream. Simple simple.
All in all, the pie tasted good, but the imperfect crust gave me syphilis. Tasty, but with a crisp texture where I rolled it out to thin. The thicker areas were flaky, but not doughy. I’m going to look around for another recipe for round two.
Maybe what I need really is to borrow someone’s grandmother for a week or so.
Discuss...
