Pages

Monday, September 2, 2013

Easy Pie Crust


There’s nothing more American than homemade pie with a good homemade tender flakey crust! I am giving you three of the best recipe crust I found so you can try them.

If you fail don't give up! you can always buy kroger ready made Pie crust In the red box....my back up!


Martha Steward:
Shortcut your way to wonderful pies all summer. Prepare the crust and topping ahead, and keep them in the freezer.

    prep: 40 mins
    total time: 1 hour    40 mins
    yield: Makes 2

   
           
Ingredients

    2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
    1 teaspoon salt
    1 teaspoon sugar
    2 sticks chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Directions

    Step 1

    To make the dough for the pie crust, mix 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour and 1 teaspoon each salt and sugar in a medium-size bowl. Cut 2 sticks chilled unsalted butter into pieces. With a pastry blender, cut in butter, working until mixture resembles coarse meal.
    Step 2

    Add 4 tablespoons ice water; work with hands until dough comes together. If dough is still crumbly, add more ice water a tablespoon at a time (up to 4 more tablespoons). Do not overwork.
    Step 3

    Divide dough in half, and flatten halves into disks. Wrap disks separately in plastic; refrigerate at least 1 hour.
    Step 4

    To form the pie shell, roll the dough on a floured surface into a 14-inch round. Wrap around rolling pin and carefully unroll over a 9-inch pie plate.
    Step 5

    Fit gently into bottom and side of plate. Use kitchen shears to trim dough to a 1-inch overhang; fold under, and seal to form a rim.
    Step 6

    Crimp rim with fingertips and knuckle. Repeat with remaining dough; wrap each with plastic, stack, and freeze.






Lynne's Pie Crust Improv Guide: One Formula, Three tricks












Ingredients
Pie crust has intimidation written all over it. So let's bring it down to where it belongs — you only need a few key pieces of information. For me it comes down to one formula plus three tricks. Trust me, you can do this.
So when you make this crust, fill it with sweetened fruit and you have homemade pie. Just take it step by step — and then show off like crazy.
The Formula:
For one single-crust 9 to 10 inch pie, which holds 4 to 6 cups of fruit, you'll need:
  • 1 1/4 cups flour, measured by dipping into the flour and leveling off (preferably all-purpose, unbleached and organic)
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1 stick stone-cold unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch chunks
1. For a food processor, put all of this into the bowl with steel blade (if they've been chilled, all the better). Pulse until you get a really rough mixture that looks like big peas on steroids in crumbles of flour.
2. If you're doing it by hand, put everything into a mixing bowl, and smoosh the butter chunks and flour mix together quickly with your fingers (work fast because you don't want to melt the butter, you want it in big flakes) until the mixture looks like what's described above.
Next, we add something wet:
  • 4-5 tablespoons ice water
  • 1 tablespoon vinegar (which helps make the crust tender)

Now the tricks to finish up the crust:

TRICK #1: Don't overmix. Toss the wet and dry together with a fork (in the mixing bowl) or with a very few pulses (in food processor). You want it clumpy. You do not want it to look like cookie dough.
TRICK #2: Chill, Chill, Chill. Every time you mix or handle the dough, chill it again. That's how it gets tender. This means once it's mixed, gather it in a ball and flatten it into a disk, wrap it in plastic wrap and chill 30 minutes to overnight. Once you've rolled it out and put it in a pie pan (use shiny metal, not dark or glass), or a cookie sheet, chill it again 30 minutes to overnight.
TRICK #3: Don't let the dough get warm until it's in the oven.
That's it — you have pie crust dough.
To make a pie, you don't even need a pie pan. You could use a skillet, or cookie sheet, or upside down roasting pan — yeah, any flat metal surface will do.
Roll out the dough, chill it, then pile lots of sweetened fruit in the center (4 to 5 cups), flip over the sides, and you have a pie ready to bake. Bake at 400ºF until the juices are bubbling, and the crust is rich golden brown.
And there you have it — the pie crust formula with three tricks.

No comments:

Post a Comment