The Zog Blog

So the thing about pie crust is this. While a lot is made of whether a crust is flaky, the most important thing to remember is that any crust must also be tender to suit most people’s taste. And to enhance tenderness, you absolutely need to be fast. There are lots of other things you can do to help matters, but the bottom line is that your speed in combining the fat and the flour is way more important than the method you use to combine it. If you knead that dough too much, too much gluten forms and your crust will be tough.

Lots of people look down on using a food processor or stand mixer, but if they’re used properly they can produce a far better crust than a hand-made one that took 10 minutes or more to get together. Make an honest evaluation of how quickly you can get a dough together, and then decide how you want to combine your flour and your fat. (I use my fingers, the stand mixer, or the food processor depending on how much mess in the kitchen I’m willing to tolerate that day.) A couple of good tips: Add a little acid to your pie crust to break down a little of the gluten that will form. Only barely work the dough after the liquid has been added.

Finally, and this is the single best thing you can do for your pie crust, in my opinion: Break your fat into 2 groups (roughly 1/3 - 2/3 works best for me). Cut in the first group (quickly) until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal. This fat is doing a great job of really coating the proteins and protecting them from the liquid you’ll add later, giving you some tenderness. But it will also melt really quickly in the oven, and give you zero flakiness. So, have the second group of fat (you can use two different kinds of fat, here, to change the flavor of the crust) cut into small cubes and frozen for at least half an hour. Add the second batch of fat to the flour mixture and quickly combine it until the fat is no larger than small-pea sized. Now use your hands or a rolling pin to flatten out that fat and coat it in the flour. It should look like paint flakes, almost. Get the dough together into a disc and refrigerate overnight. These long, cold flakes of fat that never really get *combined* with the flour will melt slowly in the oven, producing steam and giving you lots of nice pastry layers in your crust–the flakiness you’re after. This method works no matter how you’re combining the dough initially.

I prefer the flavor of an all- or mostly-butter crust, but butter melts very quickly and so can be trickier to work with than shortening or lard. (Lard in particular takes forever to melt, which is why so many people prefer to use it in pies. You can work a lard dough for much longer than a butter dough before the fat really starts to break down, so your chances of getting big flakes of fat are that much higher.) If you want a crust that’s a little easier to work with than an all-butter, try subbing in some shortening, lard, cream cheese, or even mascarpone for some of the fat.

Other pie tips: If you’re using a cream or custard filling, take steps to make sure the bottom crust isn’t soggy! For pie shells that aren’t blind-baked, press cookie or graham cracker crumbs (depending on the filling) into the bottom crust–they’ll absorb some of the moisture. Bake your pies at the lowest rack of your oven, or even on a baking stone, so that bottom crust gets set quickly. For blind-baked pie crusts, brush the baked crust with either egg white or white/dark chocolate (depending on the filling) to give yourself a moisture barrier. And, sad though it is to type, always let your fruit pies sit up for a few hours after removing from the oven to avoid the ooze.

Also, Jacob is a cutie.

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