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Our Mrs. Andersons Baking® line is a collection of innovative baking accessories for the home baker.
Built to the demanding specifications of home bakers around the world, whether you’re trying your hand at making homemade pie crusts for the first time or youre a seasoned pro looking for the right pan for a recipe, this collection has it all. Bake, decorate and serve cookies, pies, cakes, and bread in confidence with the help of Mrs. Anderson’s Baking.
From a perfect pie crust to delicious chocolates molded into the most intricate shapes, the collection of bakeware from Mrs. Andersons Baking provides you with baking precision, instruction, and tasty inspiration. Discover some of the best baking accessories from Mrs. Andersons Baking, because, with Mrs. Anderson in your kitchen, you will soon be enjoying fresh home-baked goodness from your very own oven!
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What Is Blind Baking
You may want to blind bake a pie crust when the filling cooks more quickly than the crust, meaning if you cooked them together, either the crust would turn out underdone or the filling overdone.
And then there are certain pies, like cream pies, custard pies, or chiffon pies that aren’t baked at all, so the crust needs to be baked by itself, then cooled and filled.
Additionally, when you’re making a fruit pie, the filling can leak juices which soak into the uncooked pie dough and cause the finished pie to have a soggy bottom crust. Blind baking a pie crust will help prevent this common baking problem.
But you can’t simply line a pie pan with crust and bake it. If you did that, the crust would bubble, blister and puff up or shrink, making it impossible to use. The key to blind baking is you need to weigh the crust down with something to hold it flat.
That’s where pie weights come in.
What Kind Of Pie Weights Are Best
As far as what kinds of pie weights to use, you have options. There are ceramic balls and also metal chains which coil around the inside of the pie crust . You can find both for around $10 to $15. But you can also use dried beans if you have some hand. Now, you wont want to eat the beans after baking them , but you can re-use them the next time youre blind baking more pie crusts.
Some recipes call for lining the crust with aluminum foil before adding the weights, but parchment paper allows for a little more breathing and air flow, which will help the crust bake. Rose Levy Beranbaum, author of The Pie and Pastry Bible, once told us that she uses rice instead of beans. She recommends lightly buttering the parchment paper and then uses the toasted, buttery rice in rice pilaf.
What about you? Do you use pie weights?
Elizabeth Passarella is the author of the essay collection Good Apple and a contributing editor at Southern Living. A former editor at Real Simple and Vogue, she has spent more than 20 years writing about food, travel, home design, and parenting in outlets including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Parents, Martha Stewart Weddings, Coastal Living, Airbnb, and The Kitchn. Elizabeth grew up in Memphis, Tennessee and now lives with her husband and three children in New York City.
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The Best Pie Weights: Mrs Andersons Baking Ceramic Pie Weights
The traditional ceramic and aluminum beans were the best performers overall, but even they weren’t perfect: Neither came with enough pieces in a single package to completely fill our pie shells, which is critical to ensure that both the bottom of the dough and its sides remain snugly pressed against the pie plate during baking. One package of ceramic balls contained just 1 cup of weights, while one package of aluminum beans contained 2¾ cups. This is where cost entered the equation. To adequately fill pie shells with these weights, wed need multiple packages, and two packages of aluminum beans would cost more than $100. So we zeroed in on the less expensive option, Mrs. Andersons Baking Ceramic Pie Weights, purchasing four sets for about $25. This amount weighed more than 2 pounds and filled the pie plate. With these ceramic balls piled high and pressing firmly against the doughs bottom and sides, the bottom of the crust turned out crisp, flaky, and golden brown and its sides stood tall. We had a winner.
Mrs Anderson’s Pie Weights 1 Each
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Where To Buy Pie Weights
You can buy pie weights in cooking or home stores, craft stores, or online. These ceramic pie weights, from Mrs. Andersons Baking, are a popular choice they have more than 3,000 five-star reviews on Amazon. Reviewers are also loving these gorgeous unglazed ceramic beads, which evenly distribute heat, from Williams Sonoma.
Another option is a beaded pie chain, like this one from Bed Bath & Beyond, that is linked together for easier storage.
Were They Easy To Use
We used each model to partially bake 9-inch pie shells and 9½-inch tart shells . For each test, we evaluated how easy the pie weights were to use, how evenly the crusts browned, and how successfully the weights prevented the doughs from puffing up or slumping down.
At the start of testing, we had high hopes for the chain and the disk models. It was a breeze to position both of them snugly in the dough-lined plate and extract them with one simple movement once the crust was baked, but those were the only things they excelled at. In every other evaluation, they flopped .
A one-piece model made by Chicago Metallic failed to keep the crust in place as it baked.
To test the ceramic balls and aluminum beans, we followed our recommended test kitchen procedure. We placed two layers of aluminum foil on the chilled raw dough, loaded in the pie weights, and baked. To remove the weights in a tidy fashion, we pinched together the sides of the foil and lifted. Placing the weights on top of layers of foil kept them from touching the raw dough, which meant that we didnt have to wash them afterward. And while using the balls and beans was a little more time-consuming than using the chain and the disk, the balls and beans gave us much better results, so we didnt mind the extra steps.
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How Do You Use Them
Its not hard to use pie weights, but you do need to follow a series of simple steps.
What Are Pie Weights And When Do You Use Them
Heres what you need to know.
Beginner bakers may be surprised to learn that you cant just stick a pie in an oven and call it a day. Depending on the type of crust youre working with, you may need to do something called a blind bake before you add your filling and, if youre blind baking, chances are you need to use pie weights. Heres what you need to know about pie weights and when/how to use them:
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How To Use Pie Weights
When blind baking, the pie crust is usually lined with parchment paper and the pie weights go on top of the parchment, then the whole thing is baked. Make sure to spread the weights around so they’re evenly distributed from the edge to the center and not all just piled in the center.
A single set of weights should cover an entire standard pie or tart crust, but if some of your weights have gone missing or it looks like your coverage is uneven, either purchase another set or see below for alternatives in a pinch.
What Are Pie Weights
When youre dealing with a pastry crust, you have to consider a bit of chemistry: As the dough bakes, the fat melts at a different rate than the rest of the ingredients. This is a good thing, because steam is responsible for the flaky layers you associate with a perfectly prepared pastry crust. But, when theres no filling to weigh it down, steam will cause the crust to puff up and deflate. Youll be left with a wrinkly mess thats not fit for filling.
Pie weights, small ceramic or metal balls, serve as a temporary filling during the first round of baking. Theyre not extremely heavy, but theyre substantial enough to weigh the dough down enough to prevent puffing.
You can use legitimate pie weights or items you already have on hand, like dried beans or rice. Before we discuss what you can and cant use as pie weights, though, we need to talk about how to use them.
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Common Pie Weights Substitutes
Now, even though pie weights are cheap and easy to find, that doesn’t matter if you want to blind bake a pie crust right now. If that’s the case, there are a number of substitutes you can use.
Uncooked beans or rice: This is probably the most commonly recommended pie weight substitute. Just line the bottom crust with parchment, cover with uncooked beans and bake.
Note that baking the beans this way means you can’t cook those beans later. The good news is you can use them over and over as pie weights. You can even tie them up in a cheesecloth bag to keep them together, and simply place the cheesecloth bag on the parchment. Again, make sure to spread the beans around.
Uncooked rice or popcorn kernels will also work the same way.
Steel ball bearings: If it’s more convenient for you to visit a hardware store or machine shop than a kitchen store, you can use steel ball bearings as pie weights. They may actually even work better than ceramic weights since the heat from the steel will help to cook the top of the crust to an extra crispy doneness.
You could also use glass marbles, but make sure that they don’t crack or break .
Sugar: For a novel and multipurpose pie weight substitute, try filling the parchment with ordinary white sugar. The sugar will weigh down the crust just as the beans or rice will, but the cooking process imparts some caramelization to the sugar and you can actually use the roasted sugar afterward.
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What Happens If Mrs Andersons Baking Pie Weights Ceramic Is Out Of Stock And I Need To Give Specific Instructions
- Find Best Match: By default, your shopper will use their best judgement to pick a replacement for your item.
- Pick Specific Replacement: You can pick a specific alternative for the shopper to purchase if your first choice is out-of-stock.
- Don’t Replace: For items you’d rather not replace, choose “Don’t replace” to get a refund if the item is out of stock.
What Are Pie Weights And When Should I Use Them
Pie weights are small ceramic or metal balls that you use when blind baking a pie crust. To blind bake a pie crust means you bake it naked, without its filling. A recipe may call for blind baking if the filling itself is not baked . Or, you may blind bake a pie crust for a pie that has an especially wet filling, so that the crust gets a head start on crisping up and is less likely to be soggy.
Pie weights prevent the crust from forming air pockets that bubble up or shrinking as it cooks. They weigh down the dough, so that it holds its shape and stays firmly nestled against the pie plate.
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What We Liked
Mrs. Andersons Baking Ceramic Pie Crust Weights are made of natural, food-safe ceramic stoneware. We liked that the pie weights could withstand up to 480 degrees in the oven. The convenient storage container helps with clean-up and quick access for future use. These pie crusts are great to use on both frozen and homemade pie crusts. Get them here.