New York Times Pie Crust

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New York Times Pumpkin Pie With An Oreo Crust Recipe

How to Make the Perfect Pie Crust: Thanksgiving Recipes – Melissa Clark | The New York Times
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I hope you’ll forgive me for my brevity, but tonight’s post is going to be short

In a nutshell, I forgot to write one

But, let’s be honest you’re really just here for the food anyway.

So you won’t mind if I just give you this recipe and run, right?

Great

If you’re a fan of the pumpkin, you are going to love this pie. I took the traditional Pumpkin Pie Recipe from the New York Times Cookbook , and poured it into an Oreo crust. Pumpkin and Oreo are one of my top favorite flavor combos, and this pie perfectly combines the classic taste with something a little extra!

New York Times Perfect Peach Pie

Are you intimidated by pies? I sure use to be. The best ones really are from scratch, but making your own dough, rolling it out, creating the filling.and the fancy designs or lattice work on the top? Forget about it. It all seemed to be too much hassle.

Until I actually made one. And then I realized that the hardest thing about making the dough is that you need to plan a little bit for it in advance . You can use almost any filling you want , and theres no need to get all Martha Stewart on the top a full pie crust is just fine and tastes exactly the same. I promise.

We had guests in town this past weekend, which made it the perfect time to whip up a fruit pie in advance, and lucky for me, its peach season here in Colorado so they are literally EVERYWHERE.

Palisade Co, a town on the Western slope of Colorado is known for their peaches . Apparently, the high elevation climate and over 300 days of sunshine make Palisade peaches so sweet and flavorful. Palisade even has an annual peach festival with everything peach you can imagine, activities for kids, 5 and 10K races, and a peach eating contest, among other things.

Unfortunately for me, Palisade is about 4 hours away from my little town. But, I was lucky enough to score some Palisade peaches over the weekend at the Louisville Farmers Market, where C & R Farms had a booth. Let the pie making begin!

The Unexpected Ingredient Many Bakers Add To Their Pie Crusts

Ask any seasoned baker, and they’ll all agree: Mixing together flour, butter, and water just doesn’t cut it for pie crusts. If you really want your pastry to have that wow factor, you’ll need a lot more than the three basic ingredients. Many swear by replacing some of the water with vodka , some insist that freezing the butter is a game changer , and others claim that adding sugar directly in the dough is the secret to the best pie crust. But according to , it’s the addition of vinegar that really takes the cake .

The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, vinegar is an acid, which means that it prevents the formation of gluten that naturally occurs when you mix water and flour. As a result, the pie crust is much more tender, easier to handle, and doesn’t shrink after baked. Secondly, vinegar allows for proper browning. Oxidation doesn’t occur when vinegar is added to the dough, and this has the effect of improving the browning process, and making for a perfectly golden crust.

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All Butter + Some Vinegar:

2 tablespoons cider vinegar
  • How easy was it to make and work with?: I loved making this dough, even though the recipe does call for dirtying a bench scraper and a pastry blender. While there is value in using your hands to feel the texture of the dough, I find it easier to keep the temperature under control when I’m not warming up the ingredients with my body heat. The dough rolled out easily, cracking in only a few areas.
  • Texture and taste: Again, I was surprised by the impact of a small amount of an ingredient but this time, pleasantly so! The pie crust had a tang I was not expecting, and was one of the highest-rising doughs in the group: The discs look like biscuits in miniature!
  • The verdict: It might very well be myth that vinegar makes pie dough more tender, but based on these results, if I have vinegar in my pantry, I’ll surely be adding it to my pie dough, if only for the very subtle zing it added. The success of this recipe is likely a combination of the ratio of ingredients and the technique. I’d definitely rather fish out my bench scraper and pastry cutter than lug out the food processorit’s nearly as fast, and there’s less of a chance of obliterating the butter chunks.

Heda’s Mostly Blackberry Pie With Hazelnut Crumb Crust

The Shortcut to Crisp, Tender Pie Crust

This pie’s base is a take on the butter and vinegar crust we talked about above, but with a secret ingredients to give it crunch and a ton of flavor: ground hazelnuts! The filling is a simple, age-old combo of blackberry and blueberry, and on top goes some more hazelnutty pie dough crumbled up with rolled oats.

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Putting The Best Pie Crust Recipes To The Test

First, what is the best type of butter to use for pie dough? Unsalted or salted? European or Amish or Irish? That’s…a complicated question, but luckily one we’ve happily tackled. The takeaway here is that it doesn’t really matter for this testI just stayed consistent with my brands of butter throughout.

How To Blind Bake Pie Crust

Follow these par baking steps if you are making a pie that needs to be baked for 40 minutes or longer once filled. If the pie you are making will not be baked once filled, or baked for 30 minutes or less, then the pie crust should be fully baked see next section.

  • Prick the base with a fork to help stop it from bubbling up

  • Place large sheet of parchment / baking paper over the pie tin

  • Place another piece over it to form 90 degrees across the other one

  • Fill pie tin with baking beads, dry rice or beans or sugar this weighs the pastry down to stop the base from bubbling up and the sides from sliding down

  • Bake for 15 minutes at 200°C/390°F .

  • Remove pie weights using paper overhang. Be careful here nobody wants hot beads bouncing all over the kitchen!!

  • Return to oven for just 5 minutes to set the base

  • Remove from oven and voila! Ready for your favourite filling! This particular crust was filled with Pecan Pie Filling.

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    The Perfect Crust Not Just A Dream

    About ten years ago, I came across a recipe that fulfilled all my pie baking dreams an easy and reliable recipe that turned out a perfect pie crust every single time! How? Well, its all due to a surprising secret ingredient that I never, ever expected to find in a pie recipe.

    But before I get to that secret ingredient I want to talk about temperature. If you want to make a great pie crust or any good pastry youve got to embrace the cold.

    Your hands should be cool. Your rolling pin should be cool. Your counter should be cool. Some people swear by rolling their dough on a marble slab.

    And your ingredients should be cold, really cold. I keep the shortening sticks I use for pie in the freezer. I also pop the butter in there for about 20 minutes before I make the pie. I dont just use cold water, I use ice water. And I also put the vodka in the freezer before I use it for the pie.

    There Is No Culinary Experience That New Yorkers Share More Widely And More Unanimously Than The Slice Joint

    How to Make a Perfect Pie Crust | NYT Cooking

    Aside from this bit of vaporware, the menus pleasures are real. One white pie, the salsiccia, is spread with smooth white islands of whipped ricotta surrounded by pork sausage thats been roasted into crisp brown pebbles not the usual gray marbles that roll off the crust when you pick it up. Scattered over this are fresh parsley and sweet red onions shaved thin enough to wilt in the oven. Bits of oil-cured Calabrian chiles are spooned over the surface, too, though you may not notice them until their heat makes your eyes go wide.

    Lucia is a new pizzeria, still finding its way. I hope eventually something can be done about the crust. It has been engineered for crispness, and it is satisfying to bite. It is less satisfying to chew the flavor is flat and bland, without the depth that the best pizzerias induce in their dough.

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    Finding The Perfect Balance In A Pie Crust

    But the fact that it is so simple is part of what makes pie crust so complicated. With no leavening agent in the recipe, achieving that light, flaky, tender crust that marks a truly terrific piece of pie can be tricky.

    So, its no wonder that many truly fine home cooks and bakers buy those refrigerated packages of pre-made pie dough from the grocery store. I did for years and years because, honestly, theyre pretty reliable and not that bad. But theyre also not great.

    For all those years when I was buying my pie crust at the grocery store, I kept thinking about those sublime crusts I would run across now and then when I ordered pie at some little diner or café. You know what Im talking about, those little-hole-in-the-wall spots where some sweet old lady named Flo or Aunt Mary makes every pie and pie crust from scratch. No premade crusts. No canned filling. Homemade crusts with fresh fruit and lots of love.

    Those were the kinds of pies I wanted to make, but I just didnt seem to have the knack. Every now and again, I would manage to make a flaky pie crust. But often it seemed to be a happy accident. The next time my pie crust would turn out flat and doughy and dreadful.

    The Key Ingredient Vodka

    Yes, you read that right. My perfect pie crust recipe calls for vodka. Weird, right? But it works wonders!

    Here is why putting a little vodka into your dough makes for a perfect pie crust. Vodka has no flavor . Its also about 40% alcohol. During the baking process, that alcohol evaporates. When it does, it leaves lots of lovely little air pockets in the dough, which gives you a beautifully flaky crust.

    Using vodka in your pie dough definitely sounds like a crazy idea but it really is the best way to get a flaky, tender, perfect pie crust every single time. I even use it in most of my recipes, including my bourbon pecan pie.

    Heres the recipe.

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    How Much Vinegar Should You Add To The Pie Crust

    Though it has the benefit of making pie crusts more golden and flaky, less is more when using vinegar. Let’s not forget: Vinegar is an active ingredient and much like baking soda or yeast, too much of it can ruin the final product. King Arthur Baking explains that it only takes a splash of vinegar to upgrade your pie crust. For a recipe that calls for 2½ cups of flour, the company recommends one tablespoon of vinegar.

    To best incorporate vinegar into the dough, first add it into the water. This way you can add both to the rest of the mixture all at once. As with any pie crust, over-mixing the dough is a big no-no because it causes it to become tough. Fortunately, however, the addition of vinegar actually makes the dough more forgiving in the case that you go overboard with the kneading. Whether it be white distilled or apple cider, vinegar can go a long way in improving your pies.

    To Bake Or Not To Bake

    Pies Obraz: New York Times Apple Pie Crust

    Once the pie tin is lined with the dough, you need to decide whether you want / need to bake or not. Here are your choices:

  • Blind bake Park bake the unfilled pie crust to prevent a soggy base once filled.

  • Fully bake If the pie crust will be filled with a no bake filling such as Chocolate Cream Pie.

  • No bake When you fill the uncooked pie crust then bake.

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    The Shortcut To Crisp Tender Pie Crust

    Once the chef Clare de Boer learned the grating trick, she never went back to rolling.

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    When I first started to grate and press out short-crust pastry, rather than roll it, Id show up to any breakfast or birthday with a pie in hand. Id lurk near my dessert so I could read lips after people took their bites. Shes a chef, theyd say, to explain my dangerously tender, crisp crust.

    I discovered the technique in the first professional kitchen I worked in, where I was charged with making the restaurants classic lemon tart. Terror that mine would be more bake sale than Michelin star was replaced by confidence and a baking obsession when I learned the simple secret behind their perfect pie. Its rare that a shortcut actually makes food better, and this one does.

    Ive subsequently renounced flakiness, crimped edges and latticed lids in favor of grated crusts just thick enough to cradle wobbly curds, and tender enough that they crumble when I try to eat a slice like a piece of pizza, without a plate.

    Unlike rolling, which can toughen pastry by developing the gluten in the dough, grating breaks or shortens the protein chains, which leads to extra tenderness. Pressing the strands of grated pastry directly into the pie plate makes patisserie-thin crusts achievable, without much practice.

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