Pie Crusts (Or, Word to my Mother)

It may surprise you to know that my mom does not like cooking.  In fact, I owe my love of cooking to her hatred of it as much of my time in the kitchen was really a course in survival.  That’s not to say that she doesn’t know her way around the kitchen, but in a world often divided into bakers and cooks, she is most definitely a baker.  Her lemon meringue pie is legendary in the family and came in second in a pie contest in the sixties – though history will judge.  The winner was apparently some pink fluffy strawberry nonsense that was in vogue at the time.  People in the know still make special requests for the lemon meringue – sometimes months in advance.

Part of what makes my mother’s pies so special is the flakey crust that cannot be bought in the freezer section of the grocery store.  In fact, right before I moved out of the house, I made sure that she taught me how to properly make a pie crust.  It turns out that it’s not so much the particular ingredients or ratios, but how you handle it.  Unlike bread, which is lovingly kneaded, pie crust is best treated coldly and gingerly – it’s apparently the frigid b*tch of the baking world.

Let’s look at the ingredients:

Flour

All-purpose flour is just fine.  If you decide you want a whole wheat pie crust, it will be a bit more difficult to work with, so either use a mix of whole wheat and all-purpose, or as long as you are buying whole wheat flour, get whole wheat pastry flour (just don’t try to make bread with this as there is not enough gluten to hold the gas required for the bread to rise).

Fat

Pie crust is full of fat.  Get over it.  Once you have, you need to decide what solid state fat works best for you.  Here are your options:

Lard

Lard is the most traditional.  The obvious disadvantage is that it is not nice to serve pies made with lard to vegetarians or persons with other ethical issues with pigs.  It can also have a slightly noticeable piggy-taste (unless you use the fancier leaf lard), which you might not want with a sweet pie.  The huge advantage is that lard flakes like nothing else, so if you’re a mediocre pie-crust maker like me, your crust turns out better.  Also, lard is arguably healthier than butter and Crisco based on the fat profile.   Finally, lard is cheap, though if you bought it from a non-refrigerated section of the store, it was hydrogenated, making it less healthy.

Butter

Nothing beats butter when it comes to flavor.  Unfortunately, as butter is only about 80% fat rather than 100%, it doesn’t flake quite as beautifully.  (In theory, you should use 20% more butter if you change the recipe below to an all butter recipe and reduce the liquid slightly, but I generally use a combo of butter and lard and make few adjustments.) Butter’s fat content is not particularly good for you, but at least there’s a bit of vitamin A and protein in there too. 

Vegetable Shortening

Crisco is not, strictly speaking, food, so I generally avoid it.  My mother, on the other hand, has made beautiful pie crusts for years with it and it’s easy to store. I did try a substitute for it I found in a health food, Spectrum Organic Shortening, which worked okay despite its seemingly unstable consistency and have heard that coconut oil, with its similar consistency will work well too.  Both of these options are a bit pricier, particularly the coconut oil.

Beyond that is the water and the salt, and sugar or spices if you like.

Process

Here’s a basic recipe, though I've seen variations in the ratio that work fine too: 

2 cups flour

¾ cup fat (a couple more tablespoons if butter) cut up into little chunks

5 tablespoons cold water

½-1 tsp salt depending on taste and if you only have salted butter around

Optional – tablespoon of sugar, bit of cinnamon or the like

Your ingredients, particularly the fat and water, should be cold.  After cutting up the fat and measuring out the flour and salt, I usually throw this all in a bowl (make sure to evenly sprinkle the salt) and put the whole thing in the fridge for a few minutes.

(Cut up fat looking strangely like hard-boiled egg)

  

With a pastry knife cut the flour and salt into the fat until it resembles crumbs. This takes a bit of work to get it evenly combined, but do not overwork the dough.  I usually err on the side of unevenly combined. If I had a food processor, I might use it, but I don’t .

(Almost crummy enough)

Now pull your five tablespoons of water out of the fridge or freezer (unless it’s cold out; then water from the faucet may be just fine).  Gradually work this into the dough so the dough holds together in a ball.  Now, in theory, you should add one tablespoon at a time while continuing to barely work the dough.  In practice, I find this to be an exercise in frustration.  Around the fifth tablespoon is where I start to panic as the dough does not seem to want to hold together.  Time to break into the vodka.  Seriously.

Hopefully you have a bottle of vodka in your freezer ready for moments like this when a martini is necessary.  More practically though, the latest tip I’ve seen floating around the interwebs is that if you need to add more liquid, a strong flavorless alcohol like vodka will pretty much bake off in the oven so you can add a bit more liquid to make the dough easier to work with. 

Given my history with pie crusts, I usually leave out a tablespoon of the water and add two more of vodka to give me a bit more liquid to hold the dough together.  Works like a charm.

Once you’ve got a ball of dough, break it in two.  Flatten a bit and wrap each in plastic.  (Unless I’m making a pie with a crust top or two pies, I generally throw one crust directly in the freezer.)  An hour (at least, a day or so is fine) later, you’re ready to roll.

With your frigerated  (yes, that’s a word) dough and rolling pin in hand, flour your work surface (the counter) and rolling pin, and roll out a misshapen circle that will fit in your pie plate.  The trick is to do this in as few rolls with the rolling pin as possible, which is why your circle is likely to be misshapen.  Better misshapen than worked to death.   Then, place the dough in the pie plate and take the misshapen edges  and fold or press them into a fancy or “rustic” design of choice.  

(Crust gently laid on plate before pushing it down and folding up the edges)

If you are putting a crust top on, leave the bottom edges floppy, put your filling in, followed by the top crust, and then smush the two layers of crust together around the edge to seal it.  Be sure to cut a vent in the top or get ready to clean your oven.

So that’s it, you’ve got a pie crust.  You're usually baking this filled in a medium oven (325-350F) for around 40 minutes, but that depends on what's in there. 

Next up – things to do with pie crusts like meat pies and quiches.  

(A finished product)

Pizza is important

Why is pizza important?  Two reasons:  Everybody but the grouchiest curmudgeon loves pizza and it's a really good way to use up random bits of food.

First, the crust.  While I promised to free you from recipes, see rule #5 in the first post.  Admittedly, baking provides its own set of challenges, so unless it's your profession, you probably need to somewhat adhere to a formula to ensure that it's food and not glue that you end up with.  Luckily, pizza is something that I make often enough that I can remember the ratios without looking them up. You could probably just put the amounts on a post-it note inside of a cupboard.

• 3 cups flour (plain all-purpose, though you can substitute up to half for wheat flour or bread flour)
• A packet or a bit less than a tablespoon of instant yeast (you can use the kind you add to water to proof, but its harder and won't make a noticeable difference)
• At least a teaspoon of salt (do not skip)
• One tablespoon of olive oil (or other oil or melted butter)
• One tablespoon of honey or sugar (optional)
• One cup of warm water

Mix the dry ingredients together, then everything else.  If the dough is too sticky, add some more flour.  If you can't get it to come together add some more water. Either way, add a very small amount at a time.  You can also throw in some chopped fresh or dried herbs if you're fancy.

Once you have a nice dough ball, knead for 5 minutes. Kneading is basically shoving it around and squashing it - there's no right way as long as you are not tearing up the dough. Most people use a floured surface. I usually knead it directly in the bowl I made it in or knead it in my hands since I'm too lazy to clean the floured surface at this point.

Put it back in the bowl, cover with a towel or plastic wrap, and leave for about an hour until it's twice its size. Alternatively, throw it in the fridge and deal with it tomorrow. Or throw it in the freezer and deal with it whenever.

Once it has doubled in size, fold the dough a few times to return it back to its original size and squash the air out. You're now ready to go.

Turn the oven on as high as it will go - it'll need at least 15-20 minutes to get anywhere near hot enough.

This recipe will make 4 small pizzas, 3 medium, or two biggish pizzas. If you can't eat it all now, make it all now and take the rest with you to work tomorrow for lunch. Or the dough will keep two days in the fridge and indefinitely in the freezer.

Flour a work surface (i.e. the counter) and divide the dough into however many pizzas you are making. Roll out the dough with a rolling pin (or wine bottle if you don't have one) and place either on a greased tray large enough for the pizza base, or, for the fancy, on a heated baking stone with polenta (course corn flour) sprinkled on it.

My baking stone is actually a large terra cotta flower pot base that I got cheap at the hardware store when I decided to bake a bunch of bread. We do one pizza on this and the others on regular metal tray. The one on the stone is easier to get off, but not much other difference.

The sauce:
You don't need pizza sauce.  Leftover pasta sauce (red, white, pesto) will work, as will BBQ sauce, pureed tomatoes, or just plain olive oil brushed on with some chopped garlic and herbs.  The point of the pizza is to get rid of the stuff in your fridge, not add to it.  You can even skip the sauce.

The toppings:
This is the true beauty of the pizza - anything goes.  Here is where you get to look at what you have and imagine what flavors go well together and work with it.  If you're a mediocre gardener like me, and don't know how to highlight that one pathetic eggplant you managed to grow this year, put it on a pizza.

Some tips:

• Meat should be cooked.  Bacon makes most things better, but leftover chicken, sausage, carne asada, salmon (if there is such a thing as leftover salmon) are all great.  Deli meats are also fine.
• Vegetables - while raw is fine, if you have leftover grilled or sauted veggies, these are even better. Pickled and canned ones work as well (corn, olives, etc.), as does salsa. You could probably even put leftover chinese or other takeout food on it and be fine.
• Cheese - mozzarella, while delicious, is not the only good cheese on pizza.  In fact, it doesn't even have to melt to be good.
• Herbs - add some if you have some growing or have some leftover.  Garlic or ginger are also nice if you like strong flavors.

Now that you have your truly stunning flavor creation, put it in the oven for 10-12 minutes - or as long as you can without burning it.
That's it.

(Fortunately our pizza baking skills are better than our photography skills.  Note to self, no more pictures of partially-eaten food.)

The Crumble

If you've ever bought a lot of a fruit on sale, went apple or berry picking, participate in a produce box scheme, or were just enamored at the farmer's market, you will at one time or another, have found yourself with too much fruit.

This time, it was apples.  Now that I live in London and farmers' markets are tougher to come by, we participate in a veg box scheme (known in Cali as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes), which means we get a box of organic produce delivered weekly, with as much of the produce being local as is possible in Britain.

Being Britain, right now that means we're getting a lot of apples since not much else fruit is growing right now.

(Note: if you photograph your food in black dishes, it looks fancy)

As I'd already made a quiche and a tart this week, I'd had enough of crusts. When I asked the SO what else he like for dessert, he suggested a crumble.

A crumble, similar to a cobbler or a crisp, is basically cooked fruit with crumbly goodness on top.  While baking involving yeast or other leavenings takes a bit of science, crumbles don't.

Peel and chop up fruit and season it with sugar and whatever else you like.  Mix together flour, sugar, and butter with your fingers till you have crumbs.  Throw the fruit in a baking dish and toss the crumbs on top.  Bake until the top is brown, not black.

1. Filling
Fruit - apples, pears, berries, apricots, peaches, or a mix, perhaps with some dried fruit tossed in.
Sweetener - sugar (brown or white), honey (go easy on this one), molasses (not very sweet), maple syrup, or a combination.
Spice - cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, nutmeg, clove, pinch of salt, vanilla, a squeeze of lemon or lime juice, tiny bit of finely grated lemon or lime rind, booze (go easy), or any combination that seems tasty to you and you have on hand.

Mix these in a bowl till you have a gloppy mess and put in the bottom of a baking dish.

2. Crumble
Flour - regular white or wheat.  About half a cup or mugful or more depending on the size of baking dish you're using and how much crumble you want.
Butter - roughly the same amount, start with about 2/3s a stick or so, at room temperature (not melted) and chop it into smaller pieces.
Sugar - anywhere from a couple of tablespoons to about equal to the flour, depending on how you like it.
Optional - rolled oats, muesli, or other grains; chopped, flaked, or ground nuts of some sort.

Mix these ingredients with your fingers or a fork until you get a crumbly texture and put on top of the fruit mixture.  If it refuses to crumble, you can break it up into small pieces when you add it on top.

Bake in a medium oven (350ishF) for 30-40 minutes, until brown.  Top with cream or ice cream.

Here's what I went with based on what I had lying around:
Apples, cinnamon, brown sugar, honey, chopped up crystallized ginger for the filling, squeeze of lime juice.
Regular flour, butter, white sugar, oats, ground almonds, chopped walnuts for the top.

(Yum)