Pie Dough: (Or, why you’ll never need to buy pre-made pie crust ever again.)

Note:  This is a long posting today.  What can I say? There’s a lot of little details for making good pie dough.  Pour a big cup of coffee or your favorite adult beverage, sit back, and enjoy the ride.  Once we reach our cruising altitude of 10,000 feet, you may operate your battery powered devices.

Mmmmm, pie. Say that in your best Homer Simpson impersonation, and that’s about how much I like pie. Any kind of pie, really. Fruit pie, custard pie, hand pie, quiche, tarts, there’s too many to mention. I don’t think I’ve ever met a pie I didn’t like.

I take that back, there is actually pie that I don’t like. That’s merely a technicality, because most bad pie that I’ve had is a result of bad pie crust. It’s either too tough, too greasy, or it just flat out falls apart as soon as you put a fork to it. I did a google search for “pie crust recipe,” and I got 69,900 hits. Granted, there probably aren’t that many recipes, because some of those results have to do with pie crust and male body part enlargement pills. Nonetheless, I’m willing to bet there are THOUSANDS of pie crust recipes out there. From exotic fats to flour blends to adding vodka to the dough (a trick that, while it works, isn’t necessary if you’re doing things properly), to a bazillion techniques to make the dough itself, you can drive yourself crazy trying to find a pie dough recipe that works. Most of them will work, to some degree. Some of the recipes are so fussy that if you sneeze in the wrong direction, everything falls apart, and you’re left with a pile of fat and flour. It’s a mess, and it isn’t pretty. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution, and it’s found in the Pie Dough section of Ratio on page 25. As it turns out, this is the ONLY base pie dough recipe you’ll ever need.

To start with, there’s only four ingredients (three really, but I add a bit of salt to the dough). It’s all-purpose flour, butter, ice water, and the before-mentioned salt (I was using unsalted butter, so that’s why I added salt. If your butter is already salted, leave it out). The ratio for this is 3 parts flour, 2 parts fat, and one part water, all BY WEIGHT.

HEY, I THOUGHT YOU SAID YOU WEREN’T DISCLOSING THE RATIOS!!!!

Yeah, I said that.  But I can do this now, at least for a couple of them, because there is a nifty little chart posted on Michael Ruhlman’s blog that tells you what all the dough and batter ratios are.  I figure if he’s willing to publish it on his site, I can too.  So there.

I cut this recipe in half, because I only wanted one pie crust, and I didn’t have a use for the extra dough. Sad really, because one can never have too much pie.

The flour gets weighed out, and the butter is cubed. The butter needs to be very, very cold, almost frozen. Go from fridge to mixing as quickly as possible. Next, the question is how to get the flour and butter together. Michael says to mix these two together by hand. That’s a problem for me, because I have very warm hands, and every time I’ve tried to make pie dough by hand, the butter ends up melting before I can get it incorporated into the flour. Secondly, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m incredibly lazy. Thankfully, there is a household appliance that will do this much better than I can. A food processor can get that butter into the flour in a matter of seconds, without melting the flour. Sorry Michael, I have to stray from your method. I only do this because I know it works. If you can get the butter incorporated into the flour quickly and efficiently, by all means, do this by hand. For me, it’s food processor all the way.

Ok, now the next biggest question is when to stop mixing? I’ve read in cookbooks that is should look like anything from coarse sand to small gravel. That’s a pretty wide margin. Really though, it doesn’t really matter that much. I’ll just say this: if you have pieces of fat that are no bigger than a green pea, you can stop. Otherwise, keep going.

Now time to add the water. You can mix this by hand as well, but remember that my hands are warm. So a spatula substitutes for my hands at least at first. How much water to add? My advice for this is add about ¾ of what the ratio is. Depending on the weather, temperature, what fat you used, it can vary quite a bit. And how much is enough? This is where most cookbooks totally screw the pooch, because they make the dough too wet. While this makes the dough very easy to roll out, it also makes it tough, because more water=more gluten=tougher pie crust. This test works really well for me. Take a small ball of dough, place it in your hand, and make a fist. If the dough just barely holds together in one piece, don’t add anymore water. The dough may look a bit dry, and that it won’t hold together. I assure you that it will, but the flour needs time to soak up the water and thoroughly hydrate. It will, I promise, but it needs some time.

Dump the dough onto some plastic wrap, and use the plastic wrap to pull everything together into a disk. Put this in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, though an hour is better. Go do some laundry, take the dog for a walk, take a nap, or play some Rock Band.

Now comes the rolling part. Take the dough out, and let it sit a couple of minutes to warm up slightly. Dust everything down with flour, and commence rolling. I’ve been told I should use a French rolling pin, but I hate them. I can’t get the pressure even, and I end up punching a hole in the dough. That’s bad. I’ll stick to my cheapo wooden rolling pin. We get along greatly, and since my hands are so big, I can position my hands so that everything is rolled out evenly. As for technique, the only real advice I can give is roll from one edge, go straight across the dough, and rotate the dough ¼ turn. Turning the dough will keep it from sticking, and rolling straight across will help keep the dough even. If it starts to stick, sling some flour under it. Problem solved.

One note here. If the dough is cracking excessively around the edges, it is too cold. Leave it be for a minute or so, and continue rolling. You’d be amazed what a minute of letting the dough warm will do.

Now that the pie dough is rolled, it’s time to do something with it. You could put this on a baking sheet, sprinkle on some sugar and cinnamon, bake it and eat. My wife would be very happy with this. But I want pie, dammit, and pie we will have. So as a bonus, you’ll get one of the variations today, a free-form peach tart/pie. No messing with pie pans, creating a pretty border, or doing a lattice top. Free-form lazy is the rule of the day here. Call it whatever you want, it’s still going to be damn good.

I was absolutely shocked to find fresh peaches that tasted like peaches in my grocery store. There’s seven of the lovelies. (Instead of playing Rock Band today, I did all of the filling work while the dough was chilling in the fridge. Nice way to not be lazy.) They need to be peeled, and the best way to do that is to blanch them in boiling water for about a minute and plunge them into an ice bath. The skins should slip right off. If they don’t, boil them some more.

Peaches cut, and into the bowl they go. The book mentions to use a tablespoon of cornstarch per cup of fruit. I reckon there’s about three cups of fruit, and peaches are pretty wet to begin with, so I add three tablespoons of cornstarch. Then about two tablespoons of sugar, a teaspoon of cinnamon, and about 5 seconds worth of freshly grated nutmeg on my microplane. No, I didn’t measure it, but it looked about right, and tasted good. That’s how I know it was enough.

A word about nutmeg. Everyone should be able to find whole nutmeg in your grocery store now. I know, because I bought mine at my ghetto grocery store. If they have it, everyone should be able to get it. Also, if you’re using ground nutmeg in a can, I’m going to come to your house and give you some fresh whole nutmeg so you can see how different freshly grated nutmeg is. Then I’m going to take that can of nutmeg that’s been in your pantry since Reagan took office and shove it down your throat. Bad canned nutmeg, bad!!!

Mix everything up, and give it a taste. Mine tasted good, so it’s FINALLY time to make pie. First, put the dough on a lined baking sheet. If it overhangs the edges, don’t sweat it. It’s all about to be folded up anyways. Pile the filling in the center, and start folding the edges over. This is why it’s called free-form. Just fold it and lightly crease until it holds together. Don’t press it too hard, or you’ll make cracks, which will result in filling going everywhere, and that’s not good eats.

A little egg wash on the edges (which in this case is an egg white with a splash of water, then beaten), sprinkle on some sugar, and put it in the oven.

This should be mentioned, because in the free-form tart variation, there isn’t a baking temperature listed. I checked a couple of cookbooks and recipes I have, and came to a consensus temperature of 400 degrees. A little warmer than normal, but the higher heat is needed to ensure that the crust sets quickly, or else the butter melts and the dough disintegrates before your very eyes, and you end up with cobbler on a sheet pan. Not that cobbler is bad, but that’s not we’re after here. WE WANT PIE!!!!

It took mine about 40 minutes to brown nicely around the edges. That’s when it’s done.

Looks awesome. Letting it cool is the hardest part. Don’t go poking around on it, it needs to set on its own terms so all the starches and pectin have time to hook up and gel. Patience is a virtue here.

Ok, time to cut and eat. How does it taste? Really good, like (insert profanities here) awesomely good!!! Easily, the best tasting crust I’ve ever made. Also, the added benefit of the free-form tart is that you get a lot of crust. With one that tastes this good, you’ll want plenty of crust. It almost doesn’t need a filling. Almost.

So what did we learn? First, since this dough is so ridiculously easy, I doubt I’ll ever buy a pre-made crust ever again. Secondly, it tastes so damn good, those you make pie for will likely mount a mutiny if you ever try to slip a pre-made one in on them. Thirdly, it doesn’t take that long. Put on some tunes, and make pie. If you don’t, the terrorists win.

Ingredients:

Pie Dough:
King Arthur all-purpose flour
Central Market unsalted butter
Morton’s kosher salt
City of Austin tap water

Filling:
Peaches from HEB
Imperial Pure Cane sugar
McCormick’s ground cinnamon
Cornstarch (the one in the yellow box, I can’t remember the name)
McCormick’s whole nutmeg

Next up: Either pasta dough or biscuits. It depends how long it takes my pasta machine to get here.