Cooking Tips: Pies and Pastries
- When making pastry for pie crust, add a pinch or two of baking powder to the dry ingredients before adding the water; it will make the pastry more flaky.
- When adding water to pastry, use only about 1/4 cup ice cold water or less per 2 cups flour and never pour it in one spot all at once. Shake or sprinkle the water, 1 tbsp. at a time, over the mixture while stirring with a fork.
- Too much heavy handling makes pastry tough. Roll out pastry with a light stroke of the rolling pin going up and down, giving the pastry a quarter turn after several passes of the pin.
- Pie crust browns beautifully with a sheen when brushed with milk or beaten egg yolk before baking.
- For a flavorful crust, sprinkle 1/2 cup chopped unsalted, toasted cashew nuts on pastry for lemon meringue pie, press them into the dough for apple pie.
- To keep the bottom crust of a fruit or berry pie from becoming soft, grease pie pan with 1 tbsp. butter before lining with pastry. Then brush pastry with a well beaten egg white or with shortening or vegetable fat before filling with fruits or berries so juice won’t soak through.
- Don’t sprinkle top crust of pie with sugar because it burns quickly and gives pie a speckled look. Instead, dust the top crust with sugar while rolling crust and press it into the dough with two passes of the pin. This makes the dough crisper without burning while baking.
- After filling pastry and fitting on the top crust, let pie rest for 15 minutes before baking. This allows pastry to settle down from being stretched in rolling and prevents pastry shrinkage in baking.
- Place fruit pies on a foil-lined rimmed cookie sheet so the cookie sheet will catch any spill over fruit juices and there's no messy oven to clean.
- To avoid a soggy crust with a moist pie like fruit pies or quiches, bake the unfilled shell for about 5 – 6 minutes in a preheated 425ºF oven, before adding the filling. For double crust fruit pies, place pie on an oven rack that is as close to the bottom of the oven as possible to cook bottom crust well.
- If crust edges of pie are browning too quickly, cover them with strips of foil. Or cut out the bottom of a foil pie plate the same size a pie plate in the oven, leaving about 1 inch wide foil along the rim and place it over the pie to cover the curst edges.
- Roll dough between 2 sheets of wax paper so dough won’t stick to pin.
