Tuesday, November 24, 2009

How I make pie crust

(This is how it should look when you're done mixing - this is 2 crusts worth.)
Proportions from "The Basic Pie Crust" in Bernard Clayton, Jr.'s The Complete Book of Pastry, Sweet and Savory

6 Tblsp of fat, frozen. Lard is perfect. Butter is too soft, but half
butter, half crisco works pretty well. I freeze discs wrapped in wax
paper because it's easy to break the discs up.

Put 1 c flour in the food processor. Add a spoonful of sugar if you
want. Break up the fat onto it. Pulse until no fat particles bigger
than a pea are left. Add a little bit of ice water (Tblsp at a time if
you want to measure) give it a couple of pulses, check to see if it's
starting to clump together. Repeat the add water/pulse step until it
does. You are trying to create flour covered fat lumps that have just
enough water to gather together.

Dump the dough out onto some cling wrap, shove it into a lump. Wrap it
up and stick it in the fridge for at least 4 hours, not much more than
a day.

When you roll it out, be crazy generous with the flour. Cover the
surface, cover the rolling pin, cover both sides of your dough lump.
Once I have it rolled out, I usually fold it into 4ths to transfer to
the pie pan.

No comments:

Post a Comment