P ie Dou r e t t u B l gh l A

This is the most important recipe at the pie shop. It is the

secret to ninety percent of the pies we make, both sweet and savory. New bakers arent considered full members of the pie team until they master it.

Ingredients
Makes one double-crust pie or two single-crust pies 1 sticks unsalted butter, divided 196g 12g 118g 333g 6.5g 6.5g 1 Tablespoon red wine vinegar cup ( 119mL) cold water 2 cups all-purpose our

PIE TINS
At the pie shop we use disposable aluminum pie tins, a practical necessity Im still not completely happy with. I prefer basic, old-fashioned, tinned-steel pie plates, but the returnable pie tin program we had early on failed spectacularly, as we ran through all our tinned steel pans in two weeks with only a handful of returns. I like the pans because they are relatively inexpensive (if you are not stocking a pie company!), transfer heat well, and produce a nicely browned bottom crust. Look for pans with generous rims to support a nice deep crimp. I havent had much luck with nonstick versions; I usually end up scratching the nish. We lightly coat our pie tins with canolabased cooking spray and dust them with our, much like you would grease and our a cake pan. Pie slices lift out easier, cleanups faster, and some pies, like custards or chess pies, can be lifted out of the tins whole and transferred to prettier plates for serving.

2 teaspoons kosher salt Tablespoon granulated sugar

Once the dough is rested, it can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 3 days, or frozen for up to 1 week.

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Lessons from the Rolling Table

1 C ut the butter into -inch (13-mm) cubes. Freeze 5 tablespoons (70g) for 20 minutes or overnight; chill the remaining 1 sticks in the refrigerator until ready to use. 2 Stir the red wine vinegar into the cold water and set aside. 3 Combine the our, salt, and sugar in the bowl of a food processor and pulse 5 or 6 times to combine. 4 Add the chilled butter and mix for 25 to 30 seconds, until the mixture resembles coarse meal. 5 Add the frozen butter and pulse 15 to 20 times, until the butter is in pea-sized pieces. 6 A dd 6 tablespoons of the vinegar water and pulse 6 times. The dough should start to look crumbly. Test the dough by squeezing a small amount in the palm of your hand. If it easily holds together, it is done. If not, add tablespoon of the vinegar water and pulse 3 more times. Repeat this process as needed until the dough holds together. 7 T ransfer the dough to a lightly oured work surface and knead together until smooth; dough should never come together in the food processor. 8 D ivide the dough into 2 equal parts and roll each into a ball. Flatten the balls slightly and wrap separately in plastic wrap. Let the dough rest in the refrigerator until ready to use, at least 20 minutes but preferably overnight.

THYME DOUGH VARIAtION

We use thyme dough for our Chicken Pot Pie (p. 262), because thyme and chicken taste great together. The ecks of thyme make an attractive crust and with so many different pies at the shop, it helps us tell them apart! Simply take teaspoon (about 4 sprigs or .75g) of fresh thyme, remove and discard the stems, and roughly chop the leaves. Add it to the food processor along with the other dry ingredients in step 3. You can also try mixing in another herb like sage, or a spice like freshly ground black pepper.

Hoosier Mama

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Lessons from the Rolling Table

BLINd BAKING
Blind baking is a funny-sounding term that simply means baking a pie shell prior to lling it. Though it has been a part of kitchen-speak for centuries, no one has any idea where the term came from. Lately, pre-baking has taken its place in contemporary recipes, and while it is certainly more descriptive, at Hoosier Mama we prefer the traditional term. Use blind baking condently in a sentence and you get automatic membership in the secret society of pie makers! Blind baking is used for pies like Chocolate Cream (p. 141), where the lling is not cooked in the pie shell, and for quiches and some custards, where the shell needs to bake longer than the lling. We also blind bake the shells for pies like Pumpkin (p. 149) or Hoosier Sugar Cream (p. 171), where the pie lling bakes for up to an hour in the pie shell. We nd it keeps the bottom crust from getting soggy. In blind baking, pie shells are lined with parchment paper and lled with weights to keep air pockets from forming as the shells bake. You can buy ceramic weights or stainless steel pie chains at specialty cooking stores, but dried pinto beans are inexpensive and work just as well. At the shop, we line the shells with 13x5-inch (32.5x12.5-cm) coffee lters instead of parchment paper; they t the 9-inch (22.5-cm) crimps perfectly and let air ow through to the bottom crust. Dont use foil or wax paper; foil blocks airow, resulting in a tough, dense bottom crust, and the coating on wax paper will burn and smoke in a hot oven.
1 Preheat the oven to 400F (200C). 2 Place a frozen, crimped pie shell on a baking sheet. Line the inside of the shell with parchment paper or a coffee lter. Fill with uncooked beans until the beans are even with the top edge of the crimp. Press down on the beans to make sure they spread to the edges of the shell. 3 Bake for 20 minutes, rotating 180 degrees halfway through. The outer edge of the crimp should be dry and golden brown. 4 Remove the shell from the oven and carefully remove the parchment paper/coffee lter full of beans. If the paper sticks to the pie, bake it for 3 more minutes and try again. Once the parchment paper or coffee lter is removed, prick the bottom of the shell all over with a fork. Bake for 3 more minutes, until the interior of the shell is dry and light golden brown.

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Lessons from the Rolling Table

We use large coffee lters lled with dried pinto beans to blind bake.
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