How Do You Put A Pie Crust Into A Pie Pan
After you’ve rolled out a pie crust, you will need to transport it to your pie pan quickly and smoothly to keep the rolled dough from tearing. If the dough is relatively small, you can move it by sliding your hands and arms underneath the dough, lifting it, and quickly transferring it to the pie plate. If the dough is larger or you’d like more support while moving the dough, you can loosely roll the dough over your rolling pin to move it, then unroll the dough over your pie dish.
Once the pie dough is resting on the pie pan, you begin shaping it by smoothing the dough across the bottom surface of the pan and then fitting the dough into the crease of the pan. Next, you’ll press the dough against the sides of the dish, allowing any extra dough to hang over the lip. Trim the dough about half an inch past the lip of the dish, and crimp the edge of your pie crust as you like.
The Best Pie Plate Overall: Williams Sonoma Goldtouch Nonstick Pie Dish
This sturdy metal dish performed exceptionally well in both tests. The pies baked evenly to a perfect golden brown color and the slices were easy to remove when cool. This dish especially excelled in the berry pie test, and produced the most evenly baked and crisp crust of the bunch. Williams Sonomas site claims that the Goldtouch ceramic based coating is more durable than other non-stick surfaces. However, they do recommend using wooden or silicone tools with the dish. When I used metal tools they scratched the surface of the plate, but in the short-term the scratches didnt seem to have any negative effect on the utility of the dish. Pies still baked up golden and tasty, and the slices were easy to remove from the pan without leaving any residue behind.
To Bake Or Not To Bake
Baked graham cracker crust:Baking allows for the butter and sugar to bind to the point that the crust is sure to hold together. I find that baked graham cracker crusts yield the best result. To bake the crust, place it in the oven at 350 degrees F for 10 minutes. A baked crust will have a sturdier texture, but it wont be crumbly and will hold the pie together so that its easy to cut and serve!
No-bake graham cracker crust: If you dont want to bake the crust, you could chill it for several hours in the refrigerator, to the point that the butter becomes hard enough to hold the crust together.
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Can You Use A Pie Pan To Bake A Cake
Yes, you can use a pie pan to bake a cake, but you should be aware that pie pans typically have angled sides and cake pans have straight sides. Because of this difference, if you’re making a layered cake, the edges of the cake will be harder to frost. The cakes can be trimmed to get rid of the angled edges but may still be difficult to frost. Generally, cake pans should be used for baking cakes, but in a pinch, a pie pan will do if you aren’t interested in how good the final product looks.
Our Pick: Oxo Good Grips Glass 9 Pie Plate With Lid
*At the time of publishing, the price was $13.
The OXO Good Grips Glass 9 Pie Plate With Lid conducts heat very well, and in our tests it baked some of the most evenly browned crusts. At 2 inches deep, its one of the few glass dishes we found that qualify as deep-dish plates. It fits thick fruit pies better than shallower glass plates but isnt so deep that custard pies look skimpy. The rim is wider than most, which makes shaping a pretty crust easy, while the clear glass lets you see when your pie is done. And unlike with some other glass plates, you can transfer this one directly from freezer to oven since its made of borosilicate glass.
Among the 19 pie plates weve tested over the years, the OXO dish produced some of the most evenly browned crusts. In every test crusts baked up golden from edge to edge, with no pale spots as we saw on the bottoms and sides of pies baked in other plates. The pumpkin pie we baked in the OXO plate set into a smooth custard with a few small crinkles around the edges, while the peach pie emerged jammy and juicy with a neatly crimped edge and a crisp, golden-brown crust on top and bottom. Both pies cut neatly and didnt stick to the pan.
This pie plate comes with OXOs Better Guarantee, meaning OXO will replace it if it breaks under normal use due to any defects, and weve always found OXOs customer service to be very good. Well also continue to long-term test this plate to see how it performs over time.
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How To Make Graham Cracker Crust:
1. Mix ingredients in bowl. Combine graham cracker crumbs and granulated sugar in a bowl. Pour in melted butter and stir well to combine. The butter is the key to ensuring you have a graham cracker crust that doesnt fall apart!
2. Press into pie dish. Pour the mixture into a pie pan. Use lightly greased hands or the back of a measuring cup to firmly press the mixture into the bottom of the pan and up the sides. This step is important! The crust needs to be pressed really firmly into the dish to help ensure it sticks together!
3. Bake or chill. This step will depend on the recipe youre using and what you plan to put on top of the graham cracker crust. See baking directions below.
What Is A Substitute For Evaporated Milk In Pumpkin Pie
Lets talk about evaporated milk and why you dont really *need* it.
Canned products are especially difficult to use in small batch baking because most of the time, you dont need the whole can. This leaves you with leftovers and no clue on what else to make.
My 6 inch pumpkin pie recipe uses half of a small 5 ounce can. However, you can also substitute 3 tablespoons heavy cream + 2 tablespoons whole milk for evaporated milk.
The fat content is important, so please dont use skim milk.
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Do You Need To Bake The Crust First For Pumpkin Pie
When I first made my 6 inch pumpkin pie, I followed Libbys pumpkin pie recipe but reduced the ingredient amounts.
However, I noticed you poured the filling into an unbaked pie crust and bake both parts together. I knew based on experience this would happen:
For testing purposes I continued with the recipe. As predicted, it cracked and had a soggy pie crust.
To fix both of these issues, I blind baked the pie crust. That means you bake the pie crust on its own without any filling inside.
This allows the crust to crisp up and become flaky because its not absorbing the wet filling.
Plus you can now bake the filling at a lower temperature without overcooking it.
Emile Henry Artisan Deep Ruffled Pie Dish
Kitchns Pick for the Best Pie Plate
This is actually a hard one! Because we see the merits of glass, ceramic, and aluminum. Theyre all so different! And it does kind of depend on the pie youre making and what youre planning to do with it. For example, we love the Williams Sonoma option for a simple graham cracker or cookie crust. The OXO glass one is nice for fruit or custard-based pies. But if we had to pick just one, were actually going to diverge from everyone on this list and pick this ceramic Emile Henry dish .
First of all, its gorgeous, so its sure to elevate anything you make. We also like that its so fluted, taking the pressure of novice bakers who might be intimidated with crust work. It can also go straight from the freezer to the oven, which is handy if you tend to freeze your fruit pies before baking them. And it can go under broiler, which glass cant do.
Do you have a pie dish you love? Tell us about it in the comments below.
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Pumpkin Pie Crust Recipe
Because were making a 6 inch pumpkin pie, youre going to need a 6 inch pie crust.
Unfortunately, thats not something you can buy so you will be making my Small Pie Crust recipe by hand. I promise its easy, especially if you have a food processor!
However, I can hear some of you panicking. Maybe youre a mess when it comes to homemade pie crust.
Or maybe its the night before Thanksgiving and you needed to get that pie in the oven an hour ago.
No worries! You can buy premade pie dough then roll it out and cut to fit your pan. Youll need about an 8 inch circle so youll have enough to decorate your crust.
The Best Budget Pie Plate: Pyrex 9
The Pyrex 9-inch Pie Dish has been around for a long time for good reason. It’s just the right size for most recipes, its sturdy, inexpensive, and it bakes quite evenly. Being able to see through the bottom to check the browning on the crust is also a huge bonus for novice and experienced bakers alike. The dish was slightly harder to clean than my number one pick and had some stickage issues with the graham cracker crust, but it was nothing a little scrub couldn’t take care of.
There have been incidents of Pyrex bakeware shattering in recent years which is why this dish ended up in second place. I didnt have any issues while I was baking and anecdotally havent heard of this happening to any of the bakers I know, but make sure to follow manufacturers instructions when using these dishes to reduce the small chance of your dish shattering.
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Who Should Get This
If you like to bake pies even just once or twice a year, having a pie plate in your kitchen is worth it. Sure, you have ways to get around using onemaking a slab pie or galette on a baking sheet, for instance, or just using a disposable aluminum tin. But you cant make things like deep-dish fruit pies or towering lemon meringue pies on a baking sheet. And although a disposable tin can bake evenly, its flimsy and small, and it doesnt look so nice on the table. Plus, a good pie plate can come in handy for more than just sweets: If the dish is deep enough, you can use it to make things like frittatas and pot pies. You can also use it for recipes associated with specialty tart or springform pans, such as quiche and cheesecake.
If you have a pie plate you like, one that is durable and has served you well, keep it. But if you cant seem to achieve golden crusts or evenly cooked filling, you may want to upgrade to a better plate. A high-quality pie plate can survive many years of use, so whether youre an experienced baker or an occasional one, a good plate is worth the investment .
How Do You Take A Pie Out Of The Pan
A pie is typically served in the pan that it is baked in. For serving, a slice of pie is cut with a sharp knife and a pie server is inserted under the crust to lift the piece out to serve. If you want to remove the entire pie from the pan, the pie should be completely chilled or frozen first. A chilled or frozen pie is easier to handle and less likely to break. Once thoroughly chilled, use a knife or pie server to loosen the pie from the pan and either lift the pie out or carefully invert the pie to remove it. If you’re planning on removing the pie from the pan in advance, a disposable aluminum pie pan is the easiest to cut through and remove your pie with the least amount of damage.
The Spruce Eats / Jenny Kellerhals
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Other Pie Plates I Tested
The USA Pan Aluminized Steel Pie Pan was also a favorite. Pies baked beautifully in this metal plate. It has a ridged bottom meant to facilitate air circulation and add warp resistance and it did a wonderful job browning the bottom crust of the berry pie. The BPA-free silicone coating helped slices slide right out, but scratched after using metal utensils. USA recommends hand washing the pan which could be a turn off for folks whod prefer to use a dishwasher.
OXO makes a solid borosilicate glass pie dish which is thermal shock resistant, meaning that it can go from the freezer to the oven safely, but its 2-inch depth made the crust of the berry pie shrink down into to the pan and I imagine most recipes not specifically written for a deep-dish pie pan would suffer the same fate. The rim was also a bit trickier to hold onto than the Pyrex, which is why this was my second favorite glass dish. However, if you like to take your pies to go, this dish comes with a very handy cover.
The Anchor Hocking 9.5 Deep Dish Pie Plate also proved to be a bit too large to handle the recipes I tested it with, and the crust on the blueberry pie slumped down into the dish which made the slices tricky to remove. However, the two little handles on this glass dish made it easy to move in and out of the oven without disturbing the crust and made me wish the Pyrex had that little feature as well.
Why You Should Trust Us
Through high school, college, and culinary school, Daniela Galarza worked in bakeries and restaurant pastry kitchens, where she baked thousands of pies. She has made every type of pie dough and filling, and has used pie dishes of all sizes, shapes, and styles. Marguerite Preston, who worked on a previous version of this guide, is a former professional baker with almost two decades of pie making under her belt. Shes now a senior editor overseeing Wirecutters kitchen and appliance coverage. This guide also builds on work by Wirecutter deputy editor Christine Cyr Clisset.
To ensure we werent limited to our own experiences, for our 2019 update we reached out to some of the best in the pie-making business, including third-generation pie baker Petra Paredez of Petees Pie Company in New York City Melissa Clark, longtime food columnist for The New York Times, who has written a guide to pie crust pastry chef and recipe developer Erin McDowell, author of The Fearless Baker and The Book of Pie: Everything You Need to Know to Bake the Perfect Pies Jerrelle Guy, photographer, recipe developer, and author of Black Girl Baking and Nicole Rucker, a pastry chef and pie baker in Los Angeles whose new book, Dappled, includes a section on pie. In the past weve also spoken to a number of other cookbook authors and pie experts.
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