- Hey, I'm John Kanell and today on "Preppy Kitchen"
we're making perfect pie crust with all my tips and tricks.
So let's get started.
First off, I'm measuring out 1 1/2 cups,
or 180 grams, of all-purpose flour.
This recipe calls for double that,
but we're working in two batches.
The flour goes right into the bowl of my food processor
but if you don't have a food processor, don't worry,
I'm gonna talk about how to make this
by hand and show you, too.
For a bit of sweetness, I'm adding 1 tablespoon of sugar.
You have options though.
This is a universal pie crust,
works in both sweet and savory.
If you want your pie crust a bit sweeter,
you can add up to 1/4 cup of sugar.
It'll be delicious.
I'm also adding in 1 teaspoon of salt, there we go.
We're gonna whizz this up just to combine.
(food processor rattles)
That's nice and combined.
If you're doing it by hand,
you're just gonna whisk it up in a big bowl.
Now I need 1 cup of rock-hard cold butter.
I'm cutting this up into cubes.
If you're doing this by hand, it's the exact same step.
This cubed butter goes right into the fridge
because I don't need it right now.
This butter goes right into the food processor
after it's cubed, there we go.
Now we're gonna sprinkle this cold cubed butter
right into our flour mixture.
Pop that top on.
We're gonna whizz this up for about 30 seconds
until there's tiny little pieces of butter throughout.
This is a hack for making it work in a food processor.
If you're doing it by hand, you're gonna add all the butter
into the flour and work it up.
Your goal is to have butter that's anywhere
from like tiny little pieces to pea size,
all the way to almonds.
You kind of want some big pieces of butter in there too,
because they work some magic.
The nice thing about doing this by hand
is you have so much control over the size of the butter
and you can cheat it into a rough puff
and get like pages and pages of butter and flour
to give you a flaky, beautiful pie crust.
Both ways work really well, but I have to say
I actually really enjoy making it by hand.
The nice thing about using a food processor
is it's convenient.
You don't get your hands dirty and it's fast.
(food processor rattles)
Here we go.
All right, we need another 1 1/2 cups,
or 180 grams, of flour.
If you look at this mixture, it looks almost like flour,
it's so finely crumbled.
What happened is butter is completely coating all the flour
and it's preventing the gluten from forming,
just like a reverse crumb.
This is gonna give you a delicious, tender,
really great pie crust, because now,
we're gonna add in
the remaining 1/2 cup of butter, 113 grams.
Just sprinkle that in there
along with the remaining 1 1/2 cups of flour.
There you go, entombing the butter and flour.
I'm pulsing this twice just to distribute things.
We're doing this in two batches
because when you use a food processor to make pie dough
it's so convenient and easy,
the problem is the butter gets worked in too much
and you lose some of like the tenderness of the dough.
It could be a little bit hard.
This is gonna solve that.
If you do it by hand, I will say it is like the best
of the best and I'll show you how to do that right next.
Okay, right now I'm gonna drizzle in 1/4 cup of ice water
just all over the top,
saved a little bit, I'm gonna pulse a few times.
(food processor rattles)
1/4 cup is 4 tablespoons.
I'm gonna add 1 more tablespoon and give it a test.
You wanna have some big pieces of butter left over
because that is the magic of a delicious pie crust.
It's gonna look like a wreck, like it looks like powder,
but the test is when you put it in your hands,
you should be able to squeeze it together
and it'll hold its shape.
That's almost there.
You saw how it kind of held the shape,
but it fell apart too fast.
It needs 1 to 2 more tablespoons of ice water.
One hack that people do, but it's very confusing in recipes,
is to use an alcoholic vodka with the ice water.
And what that does is gives you liquid
that won't hydrate the dough so it's not gonna
activate the proteins and it bakes off.
That holds together really nicely, so it still looks
like powder when you lift it up, but we can work it together
and make a magical dough out of this.
This is a versatile pie crust you could use for anything
but if it's fall or the holidays
and you want to add some more oomph to your dough
go ahead and sprinkle in a teaspoon of cinnamon
with the dry ingredients.
You could add a little bit of allspice or nutmeg, cardamom,
any of your favorites are really gonna be
beautiful in this dough.
Dump this out onto your counter.
I love working on a pastry mat
because you can lift it and move it.
There's never gonna be a counter emergency
where things are stuck.
This looks like a mountain of Parmesan, it's not. (chuckles)
We're gonna make this into dough by pressing it together.
I actually like to use the pastry mat and with the heel
of my hand, push it, and in doing so,
I'm pressing it together and flattening
those little pieces of butter into pages.
You can also just almost do a kneading motion
and it really comes together.
The thing is, with pie dough, you do not want
to add too much water.
That'll take away like the crisp short crust-like quality
of it, but you need to add some.
So you're gonna work this together.
It's gonna be a little crumbly still,
but it'll all come together in the fridge when it chills.
The little bit of water in there will hydrate the dough
and like kinda just seep its way
into the flour as it chills.
Okay, don't overwork the dough.
You're just bringing it together until it holds into a ball.
I'm gonna divide this into two equal pieces.
This makes two crusts, so we're gonna wrap this up.
It needs to chill for at least 45 minutes
until we start working it.
You could get away with half an hour, it's okay.
I'm gonna wrap this up tightly.
These are like beeswax-coated fabric cloths
that are like plastic.
There we go, one, two,
and we can just wrap this up,
pop this into the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
It could be there for up to like overnight,
that's totally fine.
And if you wanna make this in advance,
you can freeze the discs of dough.
Just let them thaw overnight
and make sure they're wrapped tightly.
(jaunty music bounces)
(whistling joins music)
(title whooshes)
By hand, we're just gonna a drizzle the ice water in,
just like with the food processor, but here I'm using
the palm of my hand to press this together in the bowl.
It starts coming together,
but you see big, beautiful pieces of butter.
And now the one trick I'll show you
is to flip this over and press.
So we're pressing this into like a big piece of dough.
Then we're gonna flip it over
and keep pressing, just until it comes together.
This is cheating to give us some layers
and lamination and a really flaky crust.
Okay, this is holding together.
Form it into a ball.
Cut it in half.
Maybe we'll see some layers, beautiful.
Knowing how to make a pie crust is so important
but knowing how to use a pie crust is just as important.
In this video, I'm showing you how to make the crust
but I'm also gonna show you how to blind bake this,
which you're gonna use
for most of the recipes that involve pie dough.
You're usually gonna bake the pie dough without a filling
at least a little bit, to give it a head start.
So you get that crisp bottom, not a soggy bottom.
No, no, no.
Once your dough's chilled, it's time to roll it out
and I wanna show you a few things.
Flour your surface well, flour's your friend.
You're also gonna flour your rolling pin.
And you might notice, I'm using a pastry mat.
This solves all your problems.
A lot of times if it's hot on the day you're making a pie,
oh my gosh, this can melt into a puddle
and be really frustrating.
But if you have a pastry mat, you can lift the whole thing,
take it to the fridge or freezer
and let it chill so you can keep working it.
We're gonna roll this out
and the key thing to remember is to keep it moving.
You always wanna keep your pie crust movable and not stuck,
'cause once it's stuck, bad things happen.
And you will be re-flouring your rolling pin,
cleaning off any butter that accumulates as well.
Change the direction of your roll
and this is gonna end up being about a 12 inch circle.
You might notice that my pie crust isn't cracking.
It's because I let it sit on the counter
for about 10 minutes.
Right out of the fridge,
it's gonna be much too cold to roll.
It'll just crack, crack, crack and you'll be
pinching all those cracks together and getting frustrated
and not having a good time.
So even though it needs the chill time
it also needs a little bit of warmup time too.
There we go.
All rolled out nice and thin.
I like to roll it onto my rolling pin
and now we're gonna place that onto our pie dish.
You might be tempted
but don't press down on your pie dough.
We don't wanna stretch it,
I want to zhuzh it in.
Just push it towards the bottom.
Doing this is gonna give our pie more strength,
it's gonna help prevent some shrinkage which is a pain point
for pies where the pie crust just shrinks when it bakes,
and this gives you more control.
Any pleats that happen can just be un-pleated right now
and you're really just making the wall
of your pie a bit stronger and thicker.
If you have any really long bits of excess,
you can just trim those.
And now we're gonna fold the pie crust under itself.
If you have any parts that are a little bit smaller,
you can use those excess pieces to strengthen them.
Even though my pie dough seemed dry before it chilled,
you can notice there's no cracking happening.
Everything was hydrated throughout
and it's nice and supple because it warmed up a bit.
Finish your edges however you want.
I like to just do a little press
with my thumb for that old-time grandma look,
but you can use a fork to press it down as well.
And now the next thing to remember is that
if you baked your pie right now, it would melt into a puddle
and you'd be so sad, it would just go (groans).
What we have to do is freeze the dough.
I want all the butter frozen.
I want everything to be rock hard.
One thing to remember is that if you're making a pie at home
and you're short on time you can make this pie crust
like a week or two in advance and just freeze it,
covered up, of course, so it doesn't get
any like freezer stuff on it.
But the longer you freeze it, really, the better,
it'll bake perfectly.
Problems happen when you try and shortchange the freezing
and you freeze it until it's like firm but not rock hard.
Into the freezer at least one hour, please.
If you're making something like an apple or a cherry pie,
the whole thing'll bake at once,
raw dough, filling, the works.
But for most pies, especially the ones with no-bake
fillings, you're gonna do some blind baking.
You're either gonna completely bake the crust
or partially bake the crust so you don't have a soggy bottom
and everything is crisp and flaky throughout.
Towards the end of your freezing time,
set your oven to 425.
It needs to be nice and hot.
My pie crust (title whooshes)
is out of the freezer, rock hard as we want it,
now we're gonna protect it so we can bake it.
This means that we're gonna fold some parchment paper up.
Pretend you're back in elementary school making a snowflake,
(swingy music begins)
except instead of cutting out all those beautiful shapes,
we're gonna make a circle and then just frill the edges.
Unfold this, place that right into your frozen pie crust.
And this is a barrier that's gonna protect everything
and just keep things safe and sound.
Even though we froze our pie crust,
there's still a chance of collapse.
To mitigate that, grab some foil.
I just folded it up three times
and worked it into the shape of a pie.
I'm gonna place that right inside.
And this is actually reusable,
I use this over and over again.
I just don't want foil in my pie crust for a few reasons.
And that paper is a nice barrier in between the two.
You always do this step after the pie is frozen,
because when you're pressing the foil down,
you can mash into that raw pie dough
and it'll like, just like, it'll destroy it,
it'll have all these holes there, mm-hmm.
Now I'm gonna add my pie weights,
you could also use dried beans, remember.
(weights clattering)
Perfect.
This bakes up, 425 for 15 minutes
and then we'll continue.
(title whooshes) (bouncy music swells)
All right, look at this beautiful crust.
It's very hot right now,
but I wanted to show you right away.
So our next step is to carefully
remove all this non-edible stuff,
the paper, the foil, and the weights.
Ah, you can see that the outside is starting to take on
some color and the inside is starting to dry out.
This is the pesky part that can like ruin your pie.
Nobody wants it to be floppy and soggy, crisp all over.
This pie is gonna go back into the oven,
but I wanna tell you right now,
it depends on the recipe you're making.
Some recipes might have you just partially bake the crust
and we're gonna fill it up and get going.
Other times you're gonna bake it all the way through,
like for a delicious banana cream pie,
ooh, or coconut pie or chocolate pie.
All those pies will have a completely baked crust.
You're gonna bake them through,
but to make them shiny and glossy
and a little bit more waterproof, we're adding an egg wash.
Whip up 1 egg with a tablespoon of cream, milk, or water.
And now I'm gonna brush that all over my pie crust.
This will give you a little bit
of a barrier between the crust and the filling
to keep it from getting soggy.
And on the outside where you see the crust, it'll be golden
and shiny instead of just pale and white and dusty looking.
And you can see, my crust did not collapse.
It all worked out, mm-kay.
Dock the bottom of the crust with a fork.
We're just piercing it all the way through
to let steam release, if there's any more water
left over here, that'll make the pie crust puff up
and distort and it just won't be the right shape.
You'll also do this after you add the egg wash,
because that egg wash will fill those holes in
and defeat the purpose.
This goes back into the oven, 425 for another 15 minutes,
then reduce to 375 and bake for anywhere
between 12 to 20 or even more minutes.
It all depends on if you're baking it
to be completely cooked through or not.
And also like your oven, the pie dish,
time of day you're doing this,
anything could change the bake time for your pie crust,
so just keep an eye on it.
And if your crust is taking on too much color,
fold a length of foil in half
and we're going to create a foil tent for it.
Just wrap it around like this and then gently fold it over.
It protects the edge from burning
and lets the center cook through.
But that goes on later.
(bouncy music swells)
(title whooshes)
Out of the oven and time for a reveal.
Look at that, so beautiful.
And I wanna show you
(delicate notes trill)
that is how you know a pie crust is done.
It doesn't stick, nice and crispy throughout.
And you could fill this with anything you want
and it'll be delicious.
I hope you get a chance to use this recipe
for some delicious pie.
And if you like this video, check out my pie playlist.