Pie Crust Recipe Baking Tutorial Demonstration: How to Make Tender, Flaky Pie Crust
So, today in the Jordan kitchen, I'm goingto show you another recipe that people
have problems with, which is flaky piecrust. And, it's actually very simple. So
I'm going to show you the recipe thatI've used for years and then explain how
you can change some of the ingredientsto end up with the product that you want.
It's very basic. Actually, there's threemain ingredients flour, water, and your
fat. And then, I also have some sugar andsalt that I add for flavor and also for
the browning of the crust. First of allthe flour, you'll find that most recipes
call for pastry flour. Pastry flour isdifferent than bread and all-purpose, in
that, it has less protein. So, it's goingto give you a softer product. You'll end
up with a flaky or more tender crust.Bread flour would give you a really
tough, thick crust which you don't reallywant for a pie. Cake flour has less
protein than pastry, it'll give youit'll just be too flaky too tender and
crumble. I usually use all-purposebecause it is very similar and it's what
I always have at home. And, if you handleit right you can still get a really
flaky product. Some recipes willrecommend use bleached flour because the
bleaching process takes out some protein.So it's again a little bit softer and
it'll give you a little bit more tendercrust. But, because of what it does to the
flavor, I still prefer to use unbleached.It's a little more natural. Gives a little bit
better flavor. You could also do acombination of half pastry flour, half
all-purpose. Whatever you want. But that'sthe first thing that goes. And so along
with the dry ingredients, I'll add mysugar and salt. So the recipe I go with, I
call it "three, two, one." That's three cupsof flour, two cups or two cubes of butter
(4 ounces), one cup of water. With your dry,with your three cups of flour, I'll add a
tablespoon of sugar and then just abouta teaspoon of salt.
Your next ingredient would be your fat.So, there's different fats you can use. A
lot of recipes will call for eitherlard, shortening, or butter. Lard has a
really rich flavor. Probably not what youwant to use
or a sweet pie crust. Maybe for a savorythat would be fine. So then, your two
options here would be a shortening orbutter. Shortening has a hundred percent
fat. Butter has 80 percent so it has somemore solids and water and liquid in
there. But, I still prefer to use butterbecause it's more natural.
The flavor is better. Shortening can alsobe inconsistent in the quality and the
flavor side. And, I never have it at homeso I just kind of prefer to stay away
from it. But, if it's what you prefer,because it's 100% fat, you'll have a more
more flakiness in your crust. You canalso do half butter and half shortening
because it's pretty neutral; it'lltake on the flavor of your butter. So what I
have here, I have here just regularbutter that's 8 ounces. And, I cut it up
in about hazelnut sized pieces. And oneof the most important things is that you
keep it very cold. Same with your flour,some people will actually keep their
flour in the freezer for recipes likethis. And, your butter should be
refrigerated until you're ready to useit. So this 8 ounces of butter goes in
with the dry ingredients. And, about righthere where you would turn on your mixer.
I use a stand mixer on very low speed.You can start right here just for about
a minute or two to break up some of yourbutter. The reason why you want your
ingredients cold is because if they'rewarm they're going to all kind of come
together really quickly. You want them tostay separate. You want to still have
some butter chunks in there when you'redone so that that's going to create a
lot of layering that you're looking for.
Let's go for like about two minutes.
So, this is a commercial mixer. We alsouse KitchenAid. That's what I always use
at home. Works really good. If you don't havethat, you can also do it by hand. But the
mixer is just much quicker. This is aboutwhat you're looking for in your dry
before you add the liquid. You can seethat the the flower looks like it's
taken on some some moisture because someof the pieces have worked itself in. But,
there's still a good amount of largechunks of butter. So, you want to try and
keep a lot of those in there. And, I'llshow you why in a little while. So, this
goes back into the mixer. And, in thethree-two-one recipe, the "one" is your ice
water. And, it's about a cup. You don'twant to add all of it at once, because
depending on the temperature of your flourand the humidity in the room, may take
more may take less. So, I add the majorityof it right now while the mixer is off.
And then, one tip that other people willall tell you to do, is they'll recommend
about a teaspoon of cider vinegar. And,what that does is it weakens the gluten
which is what makes your dough stretchyand hold together. It weakens that so you
actually end up with a really soft dough,that's really easy to roll out and it
gives you just a little bit of an acidicflavor. I usually don't do that only
because it's just one extra step and oneextra ingredient. And it really doesn't
make a huge difference unless you have alot of trouble with rolling. So, at this
point, I'll just give it a few turns inthe mixer. You want to be really careful
not to overmix your dough.
So, if it's looking a little dry add,about a teaspoon of water at at a time. This is about what you're looking for. It's not going to be completely mixed
and incorporated. The reason why is youwant to do that by hand. If you mix it
completely in the mixer, you're going totend to over mix it. And, so you finish
everything by hand. You want to justlightly flour your board, your working
area. Turn out your dough .And, you willhave a lot of dry pieces there. That's
fine. And, what you want to do to finishmixing rather than needing your dough
and squishing it together, you're goingto flatten it. Get all your pieces. Just
flatten them. And then, fold it on itself.And, what that does is the layers of
butter kind of layer on top of eachother. And, it will give you a really
flaky crust. And, you don't need it to betotally put together or one big mass.
It's going to feel a little loose still.This is about what you're looking for.
It's still kind of loose, mostly, puttogether. And, you're going to still see
some good sized pieces of butter. That'swhat you want because when it bakes the
liquid in the butter is going toevaporate and create layers between your
dough. So, at this point is when you wouldcover it and refrigerate it, probably for
about an hour. And, what that does is itrest the dough so that it's easier to
roll out and also helps it to keep itsshape once you are ready to bake. So, now
I'll show you, with a dough that I madeearlier, how to roll it. You want to flour
your surface again. This is the doughthat's been resting for a couple hours,
so it's ready. You'll see this one was cut.So, you can see how there's layers of
butter. You can see how you can whereyou'll be able to tell how flaky it will
be. So, you flour this and flour the top.And, one tip I learned with rolling is
you never want to move your body to rollthings in a circle. Always roll straight
ahead of you.And then, if this needs to be turned, you
turn the actual dough. That way youalways guarantee that it's not sticking
on your surface. If you were to justleave it in one spot and keep rolling,
you wouldn't know if it was sticking. Andthen, by the time you're ready to lift it,
it could be stuck and you could tearyour dough. If you need more flour, you
can put more flour on. So, this is how the dough is going to
look. You're still going to see prettygood sized pieces of butter in there,
which is good. That's what you want. Allright, at this point, this is when you
would add it or start using it. I haveone that's already been rolled out here
for your bottom. So, as you see it's notimportant for it to look perfect on the
bottom layer. You're going to end upcutting and trimming. Right here is just
a glass pan. The glass, a lot of peoplelike because you can see if the bottom
crust is cooked evenly or not. That's aproblem that a lot of people have is
that their crust bakes on top but not onthe bottom. One way to help that is to
cook your pie towards the bottom of youroven or even on the directly on the
bottom of the oven. You can also useceramic, it really conducts heat really
well. So, you get a nice even crust youjust it's just harder to see when it's
done. Or, metal is really durable. Although,the same problem you can't see when it's
done. In the filling I use, you can usewhatever you want.
I use a cooked apple filling. I useGranny Smith because they're nice and
tart. You can always find them. And,because I cook it they hold their shape
really well. So, this is what I like touse. And then, I just cook it on the
stovetop with sugar, some lemon juice,vanilla cinnamon, and ginger. And, I'll
include the recipe for you. So, at thispoint you would just lay your top on. If
it's giving you some trouble and it'sgotten soft, another thing you can do is
roll it onto your rolling pin. And then,just roll it back over. So, you just want
to kind of attach the top and the bottomto each other.
And then, all this extra you just want tocut it off; probably about an inch away
from your pie.
And then, with what I have left, I like totry and put the top tuck it in under the
bottom layer. And, that way you won't seeany bursting after the pie is baked.
You'll get some points where there'smore dough than others. If you feel that
there's a spot where there's not muchdough, you can get a piece of your scrap
and tuck it in so that the trim lookspretty consistent all the way around; one
thing I try and do sometimes. And, onceyou've got it folded, you just press it
together and make sure it's together andyou got kind of a base to work with for
your shape.
You can see now you have kind of a lipthere. So, to finish you can really do
whatever whatever you want. A lot ofpeople will press a fork, use crimper, or
crimp it themselves.I always crimp it myself, it's really
simple. I just put um index finger andthen these two fingers around it. And, you
just do that all the way around your pie.Of course, I have big hands so my crimps
always seem to be a lot bigger thanother people. It's whatever you want it
to look like. It really doesn't matter.And, once you have this done, you can go
ahead and actually refrigerate thisbefore you bake it for about a half-hour or
if you want to freeze it for about 15minutes. What that does is it keeps all
the ingredients really cold so that whenit actually goes in the oven it's going
to hold its shape much better. But, atthis point you would freeze it. We'll
just pretend that it is frozen. Now whatyou would want to do, an egg wash. It's
basically just egg that's beaten up. And,you just brush it over your pie. This is
going to give you a really nice shinypie. When you're finished, brush over
the crust. And then, one thing you want todo with every pie especially fruit when
it bakes a lot of liquids going to comeout. If you don't have any vents for the
air to escape from, it's going to try andcome out; burst out of your sides. Your
sides will get ruined. Fruit will befalling out the side. So, you just create
some vents for the air to escape from.And, you can play around and make any
design you want. I just kind of open themup make sure that they're well
ventilated. And then, one thing I alwaysdo, you don't have to optional, I just
sprinkle about two tablespoons of sugarover the top just for the look and
because it's crusty and sweet. At this point,you would put it in your oven. And, most
ovens in general, you'd bake it about 375.I would check it after 40 minutes; could
take up to an hour depending on youroven. I also keep an eye on it. You may
want to rotate it if one side isbrowning more than the other. If you're
using convection, you would startabout 350. And, again, check it after about
40 minutes make sure it's cooking right.
So, after about an hour this is what yourpie will look like. I did have to rotate
it a few times. As you can see, it gotdark on some edges. And, just move it in
the oven so that you can make sure thatif your oven is not consistent, you'll
get a nice even browning on that. If youdon't want to do something so
traditional, another option you can do isa lattice pie. And, I'll show you real
quickly how you can do that. You would beusing the exact same recipe as this
traditional pie. When you go to roll itout, rather than trying to get a circle, I
try and make more of a rectangular shape.And then, you just cut strips out of your
pie dough. This is just also half therecipe. The recipe I showed you "three-two-one,"
you would cut that in half. One wouldbe for your bottom. One would be for your
top. So, this is just half of that recipe.And, I usually get a plate and kind of
put it upside down with a piece ofparchment on there. And you can start
building your lattice on this. You don'twant to build it directly on the pie,
because with the fruit if you're movingthis around it's going to get messy and
discolored. So, you can start with onestrip sort of towards the center. And
then, just kind of crisscross. Your secondstrip will go over just like that. And
then, when you get to several pieces youjust start moving them around so that
you want to create that lattice shape. Ijust cut them with a knife. You can
eyeball it. If you want them to beperfect, you can use a ruler. And, you can
flip these over, add another piece, put itback. Same here, you want that under. And
then, when you have your basic latticeshape, you can do them thinner. If
you want more detail, you can do a muchthicker. If you want a different look, it
really doesn't matter, it's up to you. Thenice thing about this is it naturally
has vents in there for your pie. At thispoint, I would stick it in the
freezer probably for about 10 or 15minutes. That way, these pieces aren't
soft. They're not going to shift on youwhen you go to slide it onto your pie
and they'll keep the shape. And, that'salso the nice thing about using a plate
is it gives you a little bit of a domein about the shape that you're looking
for on your pie. And then, after youpulled it out of the freezer you would
just kind of easily slide it over overyour pie. Make the readjustments to make.
And then, I just I just kind of pinch offthe ends. What you're going to see when
you're done. Again, you want to egg washit before it goes in the oven. This is a
traditional lattice pie. What's nice isyou can see the layers that you've
created with your pie dough. So, that's byhandling it carefully not over mixing.
And then, when I showed you mixing byhand, all that layering creates these
nice layers and gives you a really flakytender crust. And, if you do a lattice pie,
the baking is basically exactly the sameas a traditional pie. The baking time,
temperature is all the same. So, I hopethese tips have helped you. Again, it's
really simpleeasy to remember, three-two-one, your basic
ingredients. And, if you have anyquestions or comments about baking
please feel free to post that for us andwe'll be happy to answer those questions.
Jordan Winery's baker extraordinaire, Cristina Valencia, returns to show tips and techniques for baking the perfect pie crust from scratch. View the complete pie dough crust recipe, including pie filling, on our website: https://www.jordanwinery.com/culinary/recipes/wine-country-flaky-apple-pie. Don't forget: This pie will taste sweeter if you start the meal with a bottle of food-friendly wine: https://www.jordanwinery.com/shop. This flaky and flavorful recipe and baking tips will make it easy for you to create a pie that would make your grandmother proud. Cristina teaches you her 3-2-1 method, how to choose the right ingredients, combine them to ensure you get flaky layers and how to create different pie crust designs (pinched edge and lattice) for a beautiful presentation.