Pie 101

I love to bake. I'll bake a cake, a cookie, a brownie, a bar..I've mastered cakey, crunchy, moist and chewy baked goods. One thing I'm still trying to master...pies.

I started baking pies a few years ago. I started with the handy dandy its rolled and made for you just defrost it Pillsbury crust.

It makes a decent pie. Once this was mastered, and it really didn't take too many tries, I wanted to make my own pie crust. I try to be health conscious, so I have a hard time knowing that a killer pie crust is probably made mostly of lard...and can't bring myself to make it.

I've been using Martha Stewart's Pate Brisee..her fancy french term for pie crust. It's a pretty decent recipe...
Pate Brisee recipe

Pie making is an interesting sport. There's lots of tricks to the trade and insider tips to really make a killer pie. I can see why so many people just cop out and go and buy pie. I could make some cakes but it feels very anti-Thanksgiving to not have pie.

I found this interesting article on http://www.allrecipes.com.%20.it's/ it's their Pie troubleshooting guide
Allrecipes Pie Guide

Some other tips to add....one problem I always had was cracking dough when I roll it out. You need to chill your dough, but if you take the dough out of the fridge and roll it out, your dough will likely crack because it's too cold. Leave it on the counter for few minutes and then roll it out. Rolling out pie dough is something you get one shot at...you can ball it up and roll it out again if you make a mistake...it's just not the same and gets all gummy and weird.

Right now my biggest struggle is soggy bottom crust. I've heard that to get a really nice even bottom flaky crust on fruit pies (especially 2 crust pies..the ones that have a bottom and a top crust) you should bake the pie on a pizza stone..something I don't have since we grill most of our pizza but.....I'm out to conquer this with some test pies this week and next...because the Allan's are hosting Thanksgiving this year!

This should
1) be very interesting
2) hopefully be pleasant as long as I have no temper tantrums or mishaps in the kitchen...Mr. Allan calls these my "snicker moments"
3) be very delicious as long as I can keep my shit together!