A Brush Of Butter Add Moisture And Texture
Since store-bought pie crusts have a tendency to dry out, our experts all suggest using a moistening agent to imbue the crust with texture and flavor. Wells ups the ante by adding crushed cookies: My favorite way to up-cycle store-bought pastry is to brush it with melted butter and sprinkle over crushed cookies. I like to use buttery shortbread and a dash of cinnamon. Make sure the cookies are crushed pretty fine a food processor works best for this. Then gently press the crumbs into the pastry surface by adding a layer of parchment paper over the top and rolling your hand over the surface a couple of times to make sure it sticks. Alternatively, you can dust your counter with the cookie crumbs and lay the pastry on top. Roll it into the crumbs just enough so it sticks.
How To Make Spaghetti Pie
To make this recipe, youll need:
Once you’ve gathered your ingredients, we’re going to follow this method:
- Bring 3-4 quarts of water to a boil, break spaghetti in half and cook as directed by the packaging, probably around 9-11 minutes. Strain when done.
- Beat two eggs
- Spray the bottom of your pie pan with non-stick spray.
- In the bottom of your pie pan, mix noodles, ¼ cup of parmesan cheese and beaten eggs, while the eggs are still warm and pliable. Gently press down the noodles into the pan to make the crust.
- Saute onions and butter together in a pan.
- Add the onions, and 1 cup of sour cream on top of the noodles.
- Brown the meat and drain off the excess oil. Add the seasonings, and the tomato sauce to the meat and simmer for 3-4 minutes to cook together.
- Add the sauce mixture on top of the onions and sour cream in the pie pan.
- Sprinkle shredded cheese over the top of the pie. Add the last two teaspoons of parmesan cheese on top.
- Bake for 25-30 minutes at 350o until the cheese is melted and starting to brown.
- Let rest for 10 minutes before cutting to serve.
Using Sweet Or Tart Cherries
As far as the cherries go, we like to use fresh cherries, but if you need to, use thawed frozen or canned/jarred cherries. . Both sweet and tart cherries will work well in this pie. We usually use sweet because fresh tart cherries are almost impossible to find where we live. No matter which you use, be sure to check for how sweet they are then adjust the sugar accordingly. We love serving each slice with freshly whipped cream, but ice cream would be divine.
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The Benefits Of The Food Processor Method
So that’s all very interesting, but the real question is: Why should you care? How does this make forming pie dough any easier?
It does so in two ways. First off, this method completely removes the variability of a traditional pie dough recipe. By weighing out a given amount of flour and fat, combining them together until they form a near homogeneous paste, and then adding the remaining dry flour to that paste, you are very strictly defining exactly how much flour is used for gluten formation and how much ends up coated with fat. No more trying to visually judge whether the fat is properly cut into the flour. No more adding ice water a drop at a time until a dough is formed. The dough comes out the same, every single time.
Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik
The other key advantage is that your dough becomes much more pliable. The flour-fat paste formed at the beginning is much softer and more malleable than pure butter, which means that your final dough rolls out smoothly and easily with little-to-no risk of cracking like a traditional pie crust, even without the vodka.
How To Make Pie Crust Using Bread
1. Preheat the oven to 4250 F for a conventional oven. If you use a convection oven, lower the temperature by 20 degrees. Cut the bread into little cubes, about 1/2 to 1 inch cubes are fine, dont have to be exact. You dont need to remove the crust. Put them in a large mixing bowl2. Pour in milk and add the lightly beaten eggs. If you want to add the optional add-ons such as seasonings etc, you can add them here. I find it easier to work with your hand. Wear a glove if you dont want to get messy. Mix everything together using your hand. Squeeze the bread and mix everything to form a sort of paste-like dough. It feels moist and sticky. Depending on the type of bread you use, you may need a bit more liquid, or you may not3. This is how it looks like4. I spray my 9-inch round pie plate with non-stick spray. You can brush with oil too5. Scoop out the dough onto the pie plate. Flatten the dough with your palm/fingers to the base of the plate and gently push it to the side of the pie plate. I would flatten it to about 1/4 inch thick. Do your best to make sure it has the same thickness all around5. You can use a fork to crimp the side of the crust. This is optional. Pierce the bottom of the crust with the tines of the fork in several places. I forgot to do that here, but it turned out fine too, just some bubbly spots here and there
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Making Flaky Pie Crust Its About The Method
Whats more important than vodka is the way you combine flour and fat .
Remember that gluten is our enemy when it comes to pie dough? Well, Cooks Illustrated found that if you thoroughly mix part of the flour with the fat and make a flour-butter paste first, every particle of that flour becomes coated in fat.
Think of each particle of flour with butter raincoats. These raincoats make it very difficult for the flour to absorb water. In other words, it helps to prevent the development of too much gluten.
Then, you can add the remaining flour so the perfect amount of gluten develops. This means perfect pie crust, every time.
Making The Dough By Food Processor Or By Hand
The folks at Cooks Illustrated insist on using a food processor for this method. We sort of agree It makes making the flour and butter paste easy.
Use the food processor to make the paste then add the remaining flour. Pulse a few times then transfer everything to a bowl and add water until the dough comes together. .
Using the food processor eliminates variability. If you have one, use it.
With all that said, we hate cleaning dishes and since a food processor means 5 parts to clean we tried this method by hand.
It worked.
We used a pastry cutter to cut the butter into part of the flour and made it as close to a paste as possible. The flour was moistened by the butter and the mixture looked like fresh breadcrumbs it was not powdery from flour. Then, we cut in the remaining flour and added water until the dough came together.
The dough made by hand was just as easy to roll out and turned out just as flaky. In fact, the photo above is actually from dough made by hand, not the food processor.
So, if you dont have a food processor or are like us and hate the extra dishes, give making it by hand a go.
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Easy Homemade Pie Dough
Easy Homemade Pie Dough will be your new go to for a flaky pie dough recipe. Perfect for pies, tarts and every type of fillings. The perfect crust every time!
This is my go to pie crust recipe that my Mom used to make but depending on my dessert, for instance an Italian Crostata I like to use this Italian Pastry Dough or if you are looking for something a little different, then this Brown Sugar Pie Crust is definitely worth a try!
This is the perfect pie crust recipe that is so versatile. I like to blind bake it and fill tart shells with our favourite no bake cheesecake filling.
This was my mothers Pie Dough Recipe and this is the dough I use whenever I make my Butter Tarts or any North American Pie or Tart Recipe.
Now Italian Pies well that is a different type of dough.
Best Tools For Pie Making:
Pie making is magical. Heres a few of our kitchen favorites for making it even more fun.:
Sure, you can certainly use pre-made refrigerated pie dough. Its definitely much easier and tastes good. But if you have some spare time and really want to taste a buttery pie dough, go for the gold and make it homemade! Think of all the awesome pies you can make. Holiday pumpkin pies, pecan pies and cranberry pies are so much better with buttery pie dough. Summer time is also a big pie season. From blueberry pies to strawberry pies and peach pies, the possibilities are endless. Add that flakey homemade pie dough and you will definitely be the pie hero of the gathering!
This recipe was originally published in 2018 and re-published in 2019 with updated video.
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The Best Apples For Apple Pie
Apple pie is the perfect vessel for using up whatever random variety of apples you got from the market or while apple picking. In fact, a combination of sweet and tart apples makes for a more balanced pie filling. Granny Smith and Jonagold are ideal tart apples for baking, while Pink Lady, Gala, and Honey Crisp are sweet. All of these varieties also keep their shape as they bake.
Pie Recipes To Explore:
If you make this recipe, Id love to see pics of your creations on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter! Hashtag them #natashaskitchen
This recipe was adapted from the Joy of Cooking and The Bon Appetit Cookbook. They are both amazing general reference books that I have had in my kitchen for years. Highly recommend!
Now go forth and make homemade pie. You can DO THIS!!
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How To Make Meat Pies
This article was co-authored by wikiHow Staff. Our trained team of editors and researchers validate articles for accuracy and comprehensiveness. wikiHow’s Content Management Team carefully monitors the work from our editorial staff to ensure that each article is backed by trusted research and meets our high quality standards.wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. This article received 57 testimonials and 88% of readers who voted found it helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 1,374,617 times.Learn more…
Meat pies are tasty snack for all the carnivores and a great appetizer for parties and potlucks. Make a whole pie for the entire family or make individual pies, just for one! These meat pies are easy and fun to make, and create a great activity for the whole family. Using hearty ingredients such as potatoes, carrots, peas, and savory ground/minced beef to make amazing meat pies that your family and friends will love. Using a few everyday ingredients, you can create delicious meat pies for your next gathering or potluck event.
How To Make Easy Tomato Pie
When I was growing up, I was convinced I hated mayo . I scrunched my nose up at my mom when she mixed it into her tuna salad, and scooched my seat away from my dad if he ordered the creamy coleslaw side at a restaurant. My friends that electively opted to add mayo to their Subway sandwiches? I was utterly repulsed.
So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered that the secret to my moms famous tomato pie a staple in our household every summer was a generous dollop of good old-fashioned mayonnaise. It was quite a dilemma: admit that okay, maybe Id never really given the condiment a chance and had unfairly ruled it out of my diet, or stick to my story and give up the pie? The pie won , and acted as my gateway to mayo, which now has a permanent place in my fridge.
With some assistance from two types of cheeses, lots of salt and pepper, and a spoonful of Dijon, mayo transforms into a decadent tomato pie topper that serves as the salty, savory counterpart to stewy, sweet summer tomatoes. Consider that this is all set inside a buttery, flaky pie crust, and I dont think I have to tell you this is a must-make before summer ends.
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How Pie Crust Really Works
A few years ago, I developed a pie dough recipe while working at Cook’s Illustrated. The one trick that got majorly hyped up about it was the inclusion of vodka in place of some of the water in the recipe. It was a pretty neat trick, if I do say so myself, and it solved one of the major problems people have with making pie dough.
But there’s a good chunk of that article that seemed to have gotten glossed over by pretty much everyone, and I believe that it’s a far cooler part than the headline-friendly vodka trick, and it has to do with the basic structure of dough.
You see, it turns out that when it comes to pie dough, our existing model has it wrong. In fact, it’s not the fat that’s coating pockets of dry flour. It’s the reverse. It’s the flour that’s coating pockets of pure fat. With this model, things make much more sense. You can easily and intuitively see how fat gets coated with flour , and with this model, when you add water, you are indeed moistening dry flour so that it can form sheets of gluten.
But there’s a third element at play here that is often ignored: the flour-fat paste that forms at the interface between the pure fat and the dry flour. With this paste, what you’re getting is essentially single particles of flour that are completely coated in fat. Since they can’t absorb any water, they end up behaving in much the same way as pure fat.
Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik
To summarize, here’s what we’ve got as we’re forming a pie dough:
How To Flute Pie Crust
If you wont be adding a top layer, you can freeze the second disk for another time.
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