There's a few key aspect when thinking about pie.
Typically you want to have a really nice and flaky crust
that's made with wheat flour and some type of fat. Here we have some
butter that we're going to use for the crust. So we'll just
cut that up. I like to put this in the freezer to let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes, you
don't want to freeze completely but you do want it to be nice and cold.
This is where phase transitions become very important because
the type of fat that's typically used in pie is something that
melts at a higher temperatures so we can work with our hands
and it's a solid material, which will then
melt once the pie is baked. The water will start to
convert into steam, which can cause expansion
of these little pockets and gives rise to a flaky crust.
So now we're going to prepare our flour base.
Add a little bit of salt -- this is mostly for the flavor.
Once you have your ice cold butter or fat,
coat it with the flour and into very
small pea-sized pieces. So water,
ice water is commonly added. You only need a few tablespoons...
the flour contains a lot of carbohydrates, but it also contains the
proteins which is
extremely important for the texture and structure
bread products. In the pie however we don't want there to be
extremely dense network of these proteins
because that would result in a very dense and not very flaky crust.
Rather these chunks of fat will help prevent
some of the formation and the binding of these proteins together into a tight network.
And you can also as has been
explored, you can add and alcohol such as vodka to pie crust as well.
While water will help these proteins connect to each other
the vodka can help prevent the formation of gluten protein networks
and aids in making flaky crust.
this will also have come together into very nice
ball of your pie dough.
I've always loved food and it was one of my childhood hobbies and
when I was a postdoc started to realize
how food could actually be a powerful way to communicate science
to a broader audience. There is so much science in everyday life and that if we
can draw so many people in to learn about food
we can highlight some of the examples and ways in which
science helps us to better understand our food.