- 2 days ago
In this edition of Epicurious 101, professional chef and culinary instructor Frank Proto demonstrates how to make the best single-crust and double-crust pies for Thanksgiving. Whether it’s for apple pie, pumpkin pie, or any delicious dessert, learn how to avoid soggy bottoms to achieve the perfect flaky texture every time.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00When it comes to pie crust, there's really two main ways to go.
00:02You have a single crust, like your pumpkin pie.
00:05And then you have your double crust pies.
00:07We're talking about apple and blueberry, where there's a crust underneath and then a crust on top.
00:12Today I'm going to make one of each, and you'll see that the techniques vary slightly.
00:15But either way you go, it starts with the dough.
00:20A good pie crust is light and flaky, and it all starts with how you make your dough.
00:25First thing we do is add our flour.
00:27This is just all-purpose flour.
00:29Regular granulated sugar and some kosher salt.
00:31I'm going to use my fork here.
00:32Just kind of like get those ingredients mixed in.
00:35I'm going to add my fats.
00:36I have some butter, and the butter adds that nice buttery richness.
00:40It is chilled.
00:41And then lard.
00:42Lard adds an amazing texture to your dough.
00:45Basically, lard is rendered pig fat.
00:48And this is the fat that people used to use when they raise their own animals.
00:52It makes a really nice pie dough.
00:54Next thing I'm going to do is cut in our fat.
00:56When I say cutting in fat, we are basically going to break our fat up into small pea-sized
01:01pieces.
01:01Right now you can see it's super crumbly.
01:03And what I want to do is just kind of squeeze my fat into the flour.
01:07There are some specialized tools for cutting in.
01:10I personally like to use my hands.
01:12A lot of people are going to come at me in the comments and say, hey, your hands are too
01:16warm.
01:16You're melting that fat.
01:17As long as your ingredients are cold and you work with it quickly, hands are not an
01:21issue.
01:23If the butter is small, the lard is small, it's not going to melt out.
01:27It's actually going to give you that puff and that steam between the layers.
01:29And that's what we want for a good pie dough.
01:31If I try to put this into the dough, what's going to happen is all the fat's going to melt
01:36out.
01:36And you'll have like a void or an empty spot in your dough.
01:39You can see that the flour and the butter have formed nice kind of granules.
01:43And then I'm going to add my water.
01:44I like to use cold water.
01:46Cold water is going to make the fat so it doesn't melt.
01:48I'm just going to start to bring it together.
01:50Again, with this, you don't want to add too much water and you don't want to work it too
01:53much.
01:53The goal here is to add as little water as possible to bring it together.
01:57I think the recipe is about a half a cup.
01:59And what I usually say to my students, once you start seeing that it's not like dusty flour
02:04on the bottom, you're probably pretty close.
02:06Part of the reason I like using my hands when I add the water is that I can feel the dough.
02:11I can see what the moisture content is.
02:13I can say, oh, I feel it.
02:15It's going to stick together.
02:16I think I'm okay.
02:17I can stop with the water.
02:18So I'm going to dump it on my board.
02:19I'm going to do what I call the bulldozer.
02:21I'm just going to squeeze it this way, squeeze it this way.
02:24Just squeeze it.
02:25Really not working it.
02:26Push it down.
02:27Squeeze it together so that it holds together.
02:33Right now, my dough is not sticking to the table.
02:36If it's sticking, what's the problem?
02:37You have too much water.
02:39If you want to avoid a tough pie crust, work it as little as possible and don't add any
02:44more flour.
02:44If we add more flour here, it's definitely going to dry that crust out.
02:48It's not going to be nice and flaky and tender.
02:51And if you work this too much, you're going to form that gluten and that gluten is going
02:55to make it tough.
02:55I'm going to cut my dough in half.
02:57When we cut in our fat, what we're looking to do is form layers.
03:00What happens is they have two layers of flour and then little pieces of butter or fat in
03:04between and when that butter or fat get really hot and steamy, we're going to get a little
03:08push up there.
03:09And that's going to give us those flaky layers.
03:12And that's what we want for a good pie dough.
03:14When you do pie doughs, chilling in between and letting it rest is another crucial step
03:19to what we're doing.
03:20When you let your dough rest, it relaxes the gluten.
03:23And when we bake this pie dough, it will not shrink up.
03:25Gluten is basically strands of protein that hold our baked goods together and it makes
03:29our baked goods chewy.
03:31And in a pie crust, we don't want it to be chewy.
03:32We want it to be flaky.
03:34So we're walking a tightrope of just enough gluten to hold it together and a lot of butter
03:38to make it flaky.
03:39And they can go right into the fridge for at least a half hour.
03:45So I've taken my dough out of the fridge for about five minutes.
03:48We don't want it to be warm, but I don't want it straight out of the fridge.
03:51So basically what I'm going to do when I unwrap it, I'm going to dust this with a little
03:54bit of flour.
03:55We don't want to go crazy with this, right?
03:57We just want to add enough flour so it doesn't stick to our surface.
04:00And I'm going to take my roller.
04:01I'm not going to let it spin.
04:03I'm going to just push down.
04:05Give it a turn before I roll it out.
04:09If it's too hard, you'll see that I'm starting to get cracks here.
04:12We can fix those.
04:12It's not a problem.
04:13But when I press down on it like that, it's starting the process of softening some of
04:17that butter so it's easier to roll.
04:20Rolling back and forth, trying to get it as uniform as possible.
04:24The corner turn is going to help with that uniformity.
04:26And then we're going to transfer it to my pan.
04:28So what I'm going to do is I'm going to fold it in quarters, put the point of that quarter
04:32right in the middle of the pan, and then unfold it into the pan.
04:35Because I'm going to push it down into the pan, letting everything excess hang over.
04:40My pie dough is in the pan.
04:41It's looking great.
04:42I'm going to put this in the fridge and chill it thoroughly and use it for a single crust.
04:46With your single crust pies, it sounds just like it is.
04:52It's a single crust on the bottom of the pie.
04:54It's like your pumpkin pies.
04:55First thing we need to do is dock our dough.
04:58Dock, it's a complicated word.
05:00All it means is poke some holes in it.
05:01The holes are going to be there to let some excess steam out.
05:04We don't want our dough to start to bubble up.
05:07We're going to fold under to get a nice even crust.
05:10We'll go all the way around because we want a nice crust on this.
05:14And then just give it a little squeeze.
05:15I want to have that one edge.
05:17And then we get our fingers in here and just crimp like you're walking with your fingers.
05:23For blind baking, I need two pieces of equipment.
05:26I need some parchment paper and some pie weights.
05:29You don't want to use wax paper here because then your pie will taste like crayons.
05:33You don't have to spend the money on ceramic pie weights.
05:35I use beans at home.
05:36Unless you like going to the dentist on an emergency or the emergency room, do not eat these.
05:40So basically with a single crust, you're going to par bake it or blind bake it.
05:44And that means we're going to cook it before we put the filling in.
05:47Right, we're going to get a nice brown crust for that.
05:48We don't want to get a soggy bottom.
05:50So what I like to do before I put my parchment in is give it a little crumple.
05:56This kind of softens up the parchment and makes it a little more pliable.
06:00And it'll fit in there better.
06:02And then the pie weights go right in.
06:04And what I want to do with the pie weights is even them out.
06:08The pie weights are going to hold the dough down so it doesn't puff up and we don't get
06:11any like large voids underneath.
06:13So I'm going to put this in the oven for about 20 minutes.
06:15To the oven!
06:17The pie dough has blind baked, but it is not done.
06:20What I'm going to do is take my pie weights out.
06:22And you can take them out right in your parchment and put them aside.
06:26So my pie weights are out.
06:27But this needs to go back in the oven for about 8 to 10 minutes.
06:30We want it to get nice and lightly golden brown before we put our filling in.
06:34So let's go over to the oven.
06:37Look at that!
06:38We're at a really good point here.
06:40You can see that we have a very light brown on it.
06:42It is set in the center and that's what we want.
06:45Not crispy just yet, but it's getting there.
06:47And now we're ready for our filling.
06:48Whenever I bake a pie, I like to put it on a sheet tray.
06:51This will stop any spillover from burning to the bottom of my oven.
06:54It is also a lot easier to carry.
06:56Let's get our custard filling in.
06:57I like to fill it as high as I could possibly go without it spilling over.
07:02We're going to put this into the oven at 350 for about 40 to 45 minutes until our custard is just set.
07:07You can see right now it's super liquidy.
07:09What we're looking for when it's done is that it's slightly wiggly in the center but set on the sides.
07:14The crust is going to go from like this pale brown to a nice golden brown.
07:19So a double crust pie or a filled pie has a crust on the bottom and a crust on top.
07:26We're going to seal that filling in and get a nice golden brown crust on top.
07:30With a double crust, there is no blind baking.
07:33I do change the temperatures in the oven a little.
07:35I like to go a little bit higher in the beginning and then lower it down so that we get some of that nice browning in the beginning of the bake.
07:42There are some similarities between a single crust and a double crust.
07:45And one of the similarities is that I want to dock this dough so that we don't get any steam from underneath.
07:50Filling goes in.
07:51Today I'm going to make an apple pie, probably one of my favorite ones out there.
07:56I like to pre-cook my filling and chill it completely.
07:59It's nice and thickened.
08:00That's what I want with this.
08:01I have my egg wash.
08:02I'm going to brush this around the edge and this is going to glue my top and bottom together.
08:07I'm going to take it and just whip it right on top.
08:09So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to push down so that our pie crust sticks to each other.
08:15And then we're going to take this and fold it under the bottom crust.
08:20Not only does the egg wash hold the crust together, but the folding under also helps with keeping all that filling in.
08:27And then I'm going to do a little more pleating so it looks a little bit better.
08:31And then we can take our fingers, push, push in.
08:36Now that we have it crimped, I want to put some vent holes in.
08:39I have a knife.
08:41I'm just going to put nice five little vent holes in.
08:43This is going to allow any steam to come out.
08:46If we don't do vent holes, I'm not going to say it's going to explode, but we might get a lot of doming.
08:51And what I really want is the pie crust to be sitting on top of the filling.
08:55So the egg wash here is not just for sticking our pie together, it's also going to give us a little bit of shine.
09:01So I'm going to take the egg wash and I'm going to brush it on my pie and I'm going to put a little sugar on.
09:06I like the sugar and egg wash on top just because it makes our pie a little shiny, a little sparkly.
09:10I like the flavor and adding a little more sugar to something pretty much never hurts it.
09:14All right, oven set at 425, let's go in.
09:19And that is how you make a flaky, buttery, golden brown single crust.
09:24And that is a double crust pie.
09:26I think it looks great.
09:27I think it's brown, it's delicious, it's a little shiny from my sugar and egg mixture.
09:32I really cannot wait for this one.
09:35So I'm going to let this cool for a little while and then we can dig in.
09:40So look at this slice of pie, it's gorgeous.
09:42Nice brown crust.
09:43The bottom is nice and firm and cooked through.
09:46The edges, brown, crispy and flaky.
09:50I don't think you can get a better slice of pie than this.
09:53Let's get a piece from the back over here and some of that crunchy crust.
09:59And I'm going to get a little of this.
10:03The flakiness you see here is thanks to the fact that we took our time.
10:06We let the dough rest in between rollings.
10:09We used cold ingredients.
10:10We didn't overwork the dough.
10:12All of that focus made us have a nice crispy, flaky, delicate crust.
10:16So look at this slice of pie.
10:20Look at it.
10:21It's just like beautiful.
10:22The apples are holding together, but the crust.
10:24It's a little softer in the middle on the bottom, but the edges are super crispy.
10:28You can see that crispiness.
10:29You can hear it.
10:31Tap, tap, tap.
10:32It is firm and delicious.
10:34It's everything you want in a slice of apple pie.
10:36Going in.
10:38Of course, you've got to crack it from the front there.
10:41A little bit of that ice cream.
10:46The crust actually has a little bit of savoriness in it because of the lard.
10:49And I think that goes really well with the apple.
10:51All the small steps we took along the way is the reason this pie crust is so good.
10:56Pie crust does not need to be scary.
10:57I think that people who are pie nerds tend to scare people off.
11:01It is not that hard.
11:02A few simple techniques, a few things to remember as you make your pie crust.
11:06And it's going to come out beautiful every time.
11:08The more you bake, the more you practice, the better your crust is going to be.
Recommended
2:37
|
Up next
2:09
0:51
1:04
1:00
2:51
0:44
3:30
1:08
0:44
0:52
8:08
1:49
0:54
1:39
1:41
0:38
2:14
Be the first to comment