I would say pie crust used to be the most intimidating thing to me. Scary stuff, right??? Not too dry, not too wet, don’t touch it!!! Lard??? Are you kidding? That is hardened animal fat. Now I know lard is yummy and crust doesn’t have to be scary. But it can be. I make a very easy all purpose crust that isn’t award winning but it works. I know many people are wed to their recipe and the type of fat they use. Here is the thing: if you use lard it will taste better and be flakeier but you have animal bits in the crust and that, for some, is a turn off. That isn’t really the reason I don’t use lard. I just can’t make the leap to buying it. It is a line I haven’t yet been able to cross. So here is the current recipe I use, it is inspired by a Laurel’s Kitchen recipe but modified for my preferences. I use 1 c white flour, 1 c wheat flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 10 tablespoons butter, and some ice water. Cut up the butter into 1 centimeter cubes (totally an estimate). Blend the flours and salt in your food processor. Did I mention that the food processor is essential and the reason I got over my fear of crust? Ok, blend the dry. Pulse in the butter until you have a mixture of fine crumbs. Then slowly add the icy water a tablespoon at a time until the mixture starts to come together. Then dump it on your work surface and smoosh it together, it should stick if you put enough water in. That is the end. You smoosh and then store or roll.
I am not a cook or baker so I don’t know about this really but I have something to say about this “don’t over work the dough” thing. I do fear over working the dough because a tough crust is disappointing. However, I have never over mixed the crumbs of flour and butter. My experience makes me think that the over mixing comes with the addition of the water. So I freely mix in the butter, unafraid of over mixing. Then I back WAY off and add in the water slowly, drop by drop, until I see the slightest change of the dough starting to stick together. Then I STOP. It seems like you could always add more drops when it is on the work surface if you needed to.
This crust recipe only takes a couple of minutes but I still make several crusts at once and freeze the extras. Make crust and be merry!
No comments:
Post a Comment