Fear of Frying: Culinary Nightmares-Baking the Perfect Pie
, Food reporter Nina Barrett has done her part to tame some of the tasks that can make entering the kitchen so unnerving. She’s tackled knife sharpening, party throwing and egg boiling. For this installment, Barrett wraps up the series the way you might end a meal: with a slice of pie.Once upon a time, there were three disobedient little pie crusts. Even as lumps of dough, they had behaved badly. This was odd since they had all come from a recipe in the otherwise reliable Joy of Cooking , with only the shortenings varied for experimental purposes. One was too moist and needed to be scraped up off the counter with a spatula. One was too dry and kept needing to be patched together where it fell apart. The third one might have been JUST RIGHT, but since it seems pretty clear that some Evil Pie Crust Fairy stood over my cradle years ago and placed a Pie Crust Curse on me, this one, too, looked a little half-baked.
Now, I had heard that somewhere in the suburbs of Chicago lived the Fairy Godmother of All Pastry. So I packed up the three disobedient pie crusts and drove and drove through the River Wood Forest Lake Glens of Chicagoland until I came to her cottage, nestled deep in the woods.
The Fairy Godmother beckoned me into her kitchen and introduced herself.
“My name is Gale Gand ,” she said. “I’m the executive pastry chef and partner at Tru in Chicago, fancy-pants fine dining and Michelin star restaurant. And I’m also an author and a television personality, and I also have three kids so I’m a mom and wife. And a massive pie-baker.”
She pulled out a lump of dough she had made that morning, which had been chilling in her fridge. It contained half-butter and half-Crisco for shortening, plus the secret magic ingredient she learned about from her mother—who was, incidentally, the daughter of a chemist.
“And her secret to having a flaky pie crust,” she said, “is that she used a little bit of vinegar in her liquid. And vinegar is an acid, so it inhibits protein from developing into gluten, which is sort of what the enemy is in pie crust. That protein in wheat, if you agitate it, if you work it, if you warm it, turns to rubber, turns to gluten, which is good for bread and bad for pie. So you’re trying to inhibit those proteins from what they want to do naturally, which is get elastic.”
Her dough behaved perfectly as she rolled, staying supple and circular without sticking or cracking.
Flakey Pie Crust Recipe - News
“And her secret to having a flaky pie crust,” she said, “is that she used a little bit of vinegar in her liquid. And vinegar is an acid, so it inhibits protein from developing into gluten, which is sort of what the enemy is in pie crust.
it happens) or forgetting to take the paper insert out of a pre-made pie crust before baking the filling (yes, it happened once) usually don't make it to the table. However, the following recipes are all happy accidents that should be repeated.
Lora Reilmann, 35, even shared priceless culinary secrets to the perfectly flaky crust in her rhubarb pie. "Use vodka," she said decisively, explaining that the moisture helps to roll out the dough. "And it evaporates as it bakes, so you get this flaky
Instead of pastry, a brown rice crust adds a nice chewy texture and some additional nutrition to these zucchini-and-feta tarts. My mother could work magic with pie crust dough; the flaky layers of
Even pie crust is prepared by hand, from scratch. "Most restaurants don't make homemade crusts anymore. The secret to our flaky crust is to have it just a little bit salty," the owner-operator said. And then there are the pies --strawberry, apple,
Roses are Red, Berries are Blue « The Cooking Bride
Rhubarb. If you read the blog regularly, you know the story . The Husband hates it. My parents and I love it. I try to make at least one rhubarb pie a year, usually for a special occasion. This year I made it for Father’s Day, but with a different spin. A blueberry-rhubarb pie, also known as bluebarb. I saw the recipe in my latest Taste of Home Magazine version , I simply adapted my tried-and-true rhubarb pie recipe and replaced the usual meringue with a rustic, flaky, double pie crust. I prefer to use fresh rhubarb and if you are lucky enough to live in an area where fresh rhubarb is readily available, I envy you. I do not and had to drive to another county just to find frozen. The pie was tangy – as a good rhubarb pie should be – with an added burst of juiciness from the blueberries. The pie was a hit. Even The Husband briefly considered taking a slice.
Also wanted to mention that tomorrow is my two-year “blog-aversary” in addition to my fifth wedding anniversary. I started this blog because I wanted to write a cookbook by the time I turned 30. Boy, I feel like I have lived a lifetime within these last two years between career changes , a new baby , and life’s many ups and downs. I’m staring down the barrel of 31 in a few weeks and there is no cookbook. I’m okay with that. All in God’s good time. I still have so much more to cook and SO much more to learn. Thanks to everyone who has been reading – from those six people who first logged on back in June 2009 to all the new readers who have since discovered my little piece of the web.
Bluebarb Pie Print version
3 egg yolks 1-1/3 cups sugar 3 tablespoons flour 2 cups cut-up rhubarb 1 cup blueberries 3 tablespoons melted butter Dough for two pie crusts 1 egg whiteCombine slightly beaten egg yolks with sugar and flour. Stir in rhubarb, blueberries, and butter. Allow to stand 30 minutes. Pour mixture into an unbaked pie crust. If desired, cut a hole in the second pie crust using a small decorative cookie cutter and center the hole directly over the middle of the pie. Or cover the filling with the second pie crust and cut slits in the crust with a sharp knife. Trim and seal the edges. Brush crust with egg white. Bake at 375 degrees for 50 minutes or until firm. Remove pie from oven and allow to cool.
*Note – you may want to line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and place it directly underneath the pie to catch any drips while the pie is baking.
Flakey Pie Crust Recipe - Bookshelf
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