Pies in Pictures
or, The lost art of making piecrust
Cut the shortening into the flour and salt with a pastry cutter.
Add ice water (note floating ice cube) a tablespoon at a time to the coarse crumbs.
With just enough water, the pastry will clean the bowl.
Roll it out from the center outwards. I flour my cupboard just a little so the pastry doesn't stick
Rough circles of pastry that are bigger than the top by the depth of the sides.
Treat the rolled pastry gently. Here it was folded in quarters to keep from tearing.
Trimmed around the edges.
Pumpkin and pecan pies.Labels: baking
posted by Alwen | 3:02 PM
8 Comments:
excellent tutorial! I have never used one of those pastry cutter thingys, always used my fingers - but that looks to be much better.
How does the pastry not stick to itself when you fold into quarters to put into dish? Because that looks like a great way of doing it but with my luck it'd stick!
Oh, and the pies look DELICIOUS! yumyumyum
I want a pastry cutter! I've not seen one before. How damn useful is that!
I am such a fan of homemade pie crusts. I tend to use my hands to crumble the butter (more and more as I get older, I want to play with my food when I cook it!), and to chill the dough both before and after rolling it out. Your pies look yummy -- can I come to your house next Thanksgiving?
When my mom taught me to make a pie crust, we used a knife to cut in the shortening. It took forever! When I got married, my DH dragged me into the 20th century and bought me a pastry cutter. Wow! Modern convenience!
Rose Red, I always sprinkle just a tiny bit of flour over my crust to keep it from sticking.
Pie crust is an art much like spinning. You have to know when it feels right. I greatly admire a good pie crust, and stick to baking cookies.
Pie crust does seem to be something of a black art. I became the pastry chef in my family a few years ago, largely because I seem to have the knack.
Ooooo, those look good! Wow, you make it look so easy, makes me almost ashamed of my store boughten pie crusts. Almost. ;-) I always figure it's the filling that really matters anyway. I made my first pecan pie this year! It was a little too rich, I didn't have any light corn syrup so I substituted Lyle's Cane syrup. I think next time I'll try following the directions. ;-)
Beautiful! I always used a Joy of Cooking recipe that called for 1/2 cup shortening/butter to 2 cups flour, and I always wondered why my crust almost always fell apart. The day I stopped slavishly following the recipe and started adding shortening until it looked right I made my first decent crust. I often make it just a bit greasier and/or wetter than it has to be, on the theory that I'll be flouring it to roll it out anyway, and it will just soak up whatever it needs.
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