My Favorite Pie Dough

BLOGGER:  TONY

Ah, pie.  The quintessential American dessert than almost nobody makes.  Instead, we Americans prefer to let the bakeries handle our pies and hence we eat so many tasteless, soggy crusts with fillings full of off flavors.  That is why an accomplished pie maker has no shortage of friends and is always invited to picnics and potlucks. 

I admit that I have struggled mightily with pie crust.  I have tried forks, pastry cutters, food processors, and my fingers.  Yet, that tender but flaky and slightly crispy case eluded me.  Not to mention having doughs that were too wet and too dry.  I’m not sure I have it down pat just yet but I’ve found that this recipe works really well for me.  It’s from Baking with Julia, which is one of the finest books on baking I’ve ever read.  Here’s the recipe:

Flaky Pie Dough

(enough for four 9-10 inch open faced pies or 2 double-crusted pies)

26.25 oz (about 5 1/2 cups) all purpose flour, chilled

1 T kosher salt

6 oz (1 1/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

11 oz (1 3/4 cup) solid vegetable shortening, chilled

1 cup ice water

Mix the flour and salt together in a large bowl.  Add the butter.  Then, using your fingers, rub it into the flour until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs.  Break up the shortening and add it in bits to the bowl.  Rub the shortening into the mixture until it has small clumps and curds.  Switch to a wooden spoon and add the ice water, stirring to incorporate it.  Turn the dough out onto a work surface and fold it over on itself a few times-don’t get carried away.  The dough should be soft but it will firm up sufficiently in the refrigerator.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and for as long as 5 days.  It is now ready to roll out and used in any recipe calling for flaky pie crust.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. . . I’ve read a thousand pie recipes and they never turn out for me.  I know, I’ve been there and felt the same thing.  But there’s nothing secret about making a good pie crust.  It just takes some attention to detail.  The first thing to keep in mind is to keep everything cold.  This means putting the flour, butter and shortening in the freezer about 1/2 hour or so before you’re ready to make the dough.  That extra “cold” in the dough will make it easier to make the crust flaky.  Why?  It is layers of solid fat that make the layers in the dough.  If the fat is melted, it won’t make the layers and you’ll have a tough crust.  Cut the butter into pieces before you chill it in the freezer so that you don’t impart any heat into it by cutting it after it’s been chilled.  Also, keep your ice water, well, ice-cold.  Give the water a chance to get good and cold before you use.  Your patience will be rewarded.

The second thing to keep in mind is to keep a light hand.  Flour plus water plus agitation means gluten production.  Gluten, of course, is that wonderful stuff that makes breads chewy and that enables the dough to rise.  Think of it as the frame of a house.  It provides structure to whatever you’re making.  Some gluten is necessary to provide some structure to a pie dough but too much will make it too tough.  So use a very light hand after the water is added.  Handle is just enough so that the dough comes almost completely together.

The third thing to remember is that we’re not looking for uniformity in the dough.  It’s a good thing to have larger and smaller pieces of visible fat in the dough.  Those bigger pieces will make nice layers in the finished product.  So, don’t worry if your dough doesn’t look the same all the way through and don’t work the dough to get to that point.  You’ll end up overworking it and ruin your crust. 

The fourth thing to remember is to measure accurately.  Unless you’re some old grandma who has been making pie for years and years, I think it’s pretty difficult to get the proportions of flour, fat and water right.  That’s why I use a digital scale to measure the flour and fat. 

Finally, there’s no real technique to rubbing the fat into the dough.  Just use your fingertips and rub the fat in between your fingers and your thumb.  Use two hands at a time and the task goes pretty quickly. 

And that’s pretty much it.  If you’re successful, you’ll have created an incredibly flaky and flavorful dough.  Here’s a picture of Katelyn putting the dough into a pie plate.  Enjoy!

Scenes from Thanksgiving

BLOGGER:  TONY

Here’s a few pictures of the Thanksgiving feast.  First is the pre-feast game of Smear.

The hustle and bustle in the kitchen:

My Mom’s gravy:

Hungry kids awaiting the meal:

Jessy’s pasta salad:

Katelyn’s new best friend:

More Thanksgiving picture can be found here.

Turkey!

BLOGGER:  TONY

At long last, I have wrested the Thanksgiving turkey making responsibilities from my Mother.  For too many years, I have suffered through bland and bone dry turkey that was mostly edible through my Mother’s exceptional gravy making ability.  Her method of cooking turkey is to wake up at some unspecified time on Thanksgiving morning (usually very early), stick the turkey in the oven, and then let it sit in the oven until it’s time to eat it.  This could be early afternoon, middle afternoon, or early evening.  It really didn’t matter when we ate, the turkey still went in the oven as soon as my Mom woke up.  She did, however, had a test for when the turkey was done-the meat would fall away from the drumstick.  Not entirely untrue but even if turkey was done, she still didn’t take it out of the oven.

I often wondered why my Mom would cook turkey in this manner.  And finally, she told a story this year that made me understand.  One Thanksgiving, probably before I was born, someone cooked a turkey but failed to cook it all the way through.  My Grandmother was rather put out and I think my Mom has been trying to avoid her Mother’s ire ever since.  And we’ve had dry turkey ever since.

Well, this year, I said I would make the turkey.  Actually, I demanded to make the turkey.  I assured my Mother repeatedly that the turkey would be cooked all the way through.  I also had to repeatedly assure her that the meat would fall off the bone.  And when the turkey came out of the oven, she was right there to wiggle a drumstick.  I think she thought that was a better test of doneness than my digital probe thermometer.

The turkey was a great success.  I used Alton Brown’s recipe and it was the juiciest, most flavorful turkey we’ve ever had for Thanksgiving.  I heartily recommend it to anyone.  Here’s a couple of pictures of the turkey before and after cooking.  I’m already looking forward to Thanksgiving next year.

Sour Cream Raisin Pie

BLOGGER:  TONY

I think I first had a piece of sour cream raisin pie at a restaurant named the “Norske Nook.”  It’s a small chain of restaurants in Northern Wisconsin that specialize in pie making.  Their website states that they make 38 types of pie including sour cream apple raspberry, sour cream blackberry, sour cream lingonberry and sour cream raspberry.  I was on my way to a Moot Court competition in the Twin Cities while I in law school in Madison.  My driving partner insisted on stopping at the Norske Nook because of the exceptional quality of their pies.  And, he made sure that one of the pieces of pie we ordered was a sour cream raisin pie.  It was a great pie.  The crust was perfect and the filling was a phenomenal balance between the intense flavors of the raisins and sour cream and the relatively bland airiness of the meringue. 

Yet, as good as the pie was, I wasn’t motivated to make one.  I think at that time in my life, I still thought pie crust was out of my skill set.  (I think this is still true to some extent today.)   But then I had the pie again recently at The Shack in northern Fargo.  That restaurant is a charming , old-school diner with homestyle food and a nice selection of pies.  After seeing that they had sour cream raisin pie on the menu, I forced Katelyn into shairng a slice with me.  She had some initial misgivings but all was forgiven when she had her first bite. 

So, this past Thanksgiving, we decided to make a sour cream raisin pie as one of our contributions to the feast.  While ours did not have the mounds of fluffy meringue as a topping (which was by design, not faulty egg white whipping), it had all the characteristics of a good sour cream raisin pie.  Here’s the recipe:

Sour Cream Raisin Pie, from this recipe at Epicurious

1 cup raisins

Pastry dough for one pie, (try my favorite pie dough)

2 large eggs

1 cup sour cream

3/4 cup sugar

1 T all-purpose flour

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

1/8 tsp salt

In a bowl, soak raisins in water to cover by 2 inches at least 8 hours and up to one day.  Drain raisins.

Roll out pastry dough and fit it into a 9 inch glass pie plate.  Trim dough and crimp edges decoratively.  Chill shell until firm, about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Lightly prick bottom of shell all over with a fork and line shell with foil or parchment paper.  Fill will pie weights and bake shell in the middle of the oven for 15 minutes.  Remove foil and weights and bake shell until golden, about 8 minutes more.  Cool shell in pan on a rack.

Reduce oven temperature to 400 degrees.  Separate eggs.  Chill whites until ready to use.  In a bowl, whisk together yolks and sour cream.  Whisk in 1/2 cup sugar, flour, vanilla, cloves, nutmeg, salt, and raisins.  Pour filling into shell and bake in the middle of the oven 10 minutes.  Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake pie for 30 to 40 minutes more, or until filling is set.

Remove pie from oven but keep temperature at 350 degrees.  In another bowl with an electric mixer, beat whites until they just hold soft peaks.  Gradually add remaining 1/4 cup sugar, beating until meringue just holds stiff peaks.  Spread meringue over warm pie, covering filling completely and making sure meringue touches shell all the way around. 

Bake pie in the middle of the oven until meringue is golden, about 10 minutes.  Cool pie on rack and serve at room temperature.

Enjoy!  Here’s the final product:

Baby at 20 weeks, 1 day.

BLOGGER: KATELYN

Tony and I had our 20 week ultrasound today. We saw hands and feet, the spine, legs, arms and bones, the organs and watched the heart beat. Most of the images were tough to identify, but the technician explained things very clearly throughout. It was exciting to see the profile, look at the face and tiny hands and watch the baby move – it always seems to being active when we look or listen. The baby had it’s hands up by the face for a while, Tony thinks he saw thumb sucking, but I’m not sure. The tech asked us if we wanted to know the sex of our baby. We decline and agreed to be surprised. After measurements were taken of kidneys, the head, eyes, etc… we were given yet another due date, April 18th – about 4 days later than the last date given.

Here’s our baby now:

Another Esoteric Use for Bacon

BLOGGER:  TONY

I guess bacon can even make your borboun taste like bacon.  First it was pie and now it’s alcohol.  Is there nothing that bacon can’t improve?

More No-Knead Bread

BLOGGER:  TONY

Awhile back, I posted a recipe for No-Knead Bread.  It was a fabulous and fabulously easy recipe.  Alton Brown has created a very similar recipe and it also works great.  The loaf was chewy, dense, and encrusted with a chewy/crispy shell that was amazingly good.  Both of these breads are so good that it seems a shame to buy bread from the bakery.  Here’s the recipe:

Alton Brown’s No-Knead Bread, from this recipe

15.5 oz bread flour, plus extra for shaping

1/4 tsp active-dry yeast

2 1/2 tsp kosher salt

12 oz water

2 T cornmeal

Whisk together the flour, yeast and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the water and stir until combined. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow to sit at room temperature for 19 hours.

After 19 hours, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface. Punch down the dough and turn it over onto itself a couple of times. Cover with a tea towel and allow to rest 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, shape dough into a ball. Coat hands with flour if needed to prevent sticking. Sprinkle the tea towel with half of the cornmeal and lay the dough on top of it, with the seam side down. Sprinkle the top of the dough with the other half of the cornmeal and cover with the towel. Allow to rise for another 2 to 3 hours or until dough has doubled in size.

While the dough is rising the second time, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Place a 4 to 5-quart Dutch oven in the oven while it preheats. Once the dough is ready, carefully transfer it to the preheated Dutch oven. Cover and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake another 15 minutes or until the bread reaches an internal temperature of 210 to 212 degrees F. Transfer the bread to a cooling rack and allow to cool at least 15 minutes before serving.

Enjoy!