The 5 Most Frequent Piecrust Issues — and Tips on how to Resolve Them

Making a pie (and particularly a home made piecrust) may be intimidating. However we’ve obtained all the ideas and methods for a young, flaky, stunning piecrust that doesn’t shrink — in addition to fixes on the off probability that, one way or the other, it nonetheless occurs. 

These options to frequent pie-making issues will work for any of your favourite piecrust recipes. I’m a fan of the one in my Pumpkin- Cream Cheese Pie: I exploit half butter and half lard within the pie dough — the previous for wealthy taste and the latter to make sure final flakiness and tenderness. (And you may substitute vegetable shortening for the lard, when you like.)

And, so long as you’re taking the difficulty to make pie dough from scratch, do your self a favor and make sufficient dough for 3 single-crust pies: sufficient for Turkey Day, a leftover turkey pot pie, and one other use down the highway. You may make pie dough nicely upfront. Wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and stash it within the fridge for 2 to 3 days or within the freezer for as much as two months.

Within the meantime, listed here are 5 frequent pie-making issues and find out how to keep away from them. 

1. My crust is hard, not flaky

Cool your substances

To make sure a flaky piecrust, be sure you work with very chilly substances to maintain the fats from melting earlier than your crust goes within the oven (when it melts within the oven, it can create air pockets that fill with steam and broaden to provide flaky layers).

Stash your cooking fats (equivalent to butter, shortening, or lard) within the fridge in a single day to maintain it very chilly. When a pie dough recipe requires ice water, scoop from a bowl of chilly water with plenty of ice in it.

Use a lightweight contact

Utilizing a meals processor will make you much less prone to overwork the dough than when you had been mixing by hand. If you happen to’re making the dough by hand, watch out to not overwork the dough; incorporate the combination simply till you might have pea-sized items of butter, lard, or shortening.

Relaxation it earlier than rolling out

Make certain to wrap and chill the dough for a few hours earlier than rolling it out; this enables the flour to totally hydrate.

2. My dough is sticking or breaking up

Be light 

Take your time when rolling out the dough. Place it on a calmly floured work floor, and make gentle swipes along with your rolling pin in several instructions from the middle of the dough outward (urgent too arduous as you roll may make the crust powerful); choose up the dough on occasion and rotate it. Mud the floor with a bit flour as wanted to stop sticking. 

Nail the touchdown

Roll the dough, then gently decrease the dough onto the pie dish with out stretching it; stretching results in shrinkage. Don’t power something, however let it drape itself as an alternative. Don’t trim it but; let the dough chill a couple of minutes within the pie plate to loosen up. 

Trim the perimeters a bit longer than the sting of the pie plate rim, fold the sting underneath, and end the sting as you favor. You need to use a traditional flute; press on the dough with the tines of a fork to create a sample; or roll out dough scraps, lower them with a small cookie cutter, and paste the cutouts onto the sting with a overwhelmed egg. After shaping the sting of the dough, chill once more for a couple of minutes to permit the dough to loosen up and set earlier than baking.

3. The underside of my crust is soggy

For moist, custard-type fillings like traditional pumpkin pie (or much less traditional pumpkin-cream cheese pie), pecan pie, and chess pie, blind baking is vital to stopping a soggy crust. It merely means baking the crust till it’s golden and barely crisp earlier than the filling goes in. You may also use this step for fruit pies for additional insurance coverage that the underside of your crust will likely be totally baked and golden brown. 

To assist the underside of the crust brown nicely, make your pie in a glass pie plate: glass pie plates are likely to brown the underside of the crust a bit higher.

Tips on how to blind bake your piecrust

Line the dough with parchment paper (crumple it first to make it extra pliable), and fill with pie weights — both precise ceramic pie weights, dried beans, or raw rice. Fill all the best way to the highest so the dough is pressed up in opposition to the edges of the dish.

Blind bake with pie weights at a comparatively excessive temperature (400°F or no matter temperature your recipe requires) within the lower-middle place of the oven for quarter-hour (or the period of time your recipe specifies). Then fastidiously take away the parchment and pie weights, and bake a couple of extra minutes to dry out the underside of the crust. 

4. My crust is burnt

Be sure to don’t overbake a custard pie. Once you gently shake it, the perimeters ought to be set however the heart ought to stay a bit wobbly. With fruit pies, overbaking is much less of a danger (and underbaking is definitely extra frequent), however you may nonetheless take the next steps to stop overbrowning. 

Begin sizzling

For custard pies, jump-start the cooking of the filling by baking on the identical temperature you used for blind baking, after which decrease the temp to about 350°F to extra gently end cooking the custard. For fruit pies, begin the oven at a excessive warmth (about 425°F) for about half-hour earlier than lowering the warmth to about  350°F — this can assist your crust to set. 

Defend the perimeters

Fold a sheet of aluminum foil in half and lower a semicircle from the center; open the foil, and organize the foil over the pie, centering the open circle over the center of the filling. Loosely crimp the perimeters of the foil down over the pie dish to safe.

5. My crust has shrunk

If, after all, the crust shrunk down the sting of the pie dish, all will not be misplaced. You’ll be able to add a “necklace” of whipped cream, crumbled cookies, or chopped nuts across the fringe of the pie to cowl the error. Or slice the pie and set items on particular person plates on the dessert buffet; the imperfect crust received’t be noticeable that method.