How To Make The Best Pie Crust with Erin McDowell | Dear Test Kitchen

I haven't been a pastry guy but we with a wave of my magic pastry Wanda yeah I love tonight I feel it happening welcome to the food 52 Test Kitchen my name is Josh Cohen and the Test Kitchen director here today we're talking about pie dough and we have my favorite pie dough expert Aaron McDowell how to make the table as one does yeah the reason you're here today the food 52 community is always sort of peppering us with different questions about pie and pie dough so we're gonna bring you in to give them like a broad range of knowledge and wisdom yes it's my favorite subject to talk about and I have a lot to say okay my first favorite thing to just jumping off yeah like right off of that to start with what mixing okay because a lot of success can happen right there in the mixing bowl we're gonna talk about all my troubleshooting tips kind of along the way and you won't fail I'm here I've got you all right we're gonna make awesome pie dough together I promise so all we have in this bowl is it's my recipe for all but a pie dough which is on 350 - if somebody who has a hard time with pie crust you don't have to stick with all butter but I just like the flavor if you know how to handle the butter it will you're gonna get the same results using all butter as you are with a mixture of shortening I think flavor first I agree so I like to make my pie dough by hand and that's my my first question for you do you have hot hands well okay so like the butter is already a little bit happening you I have kind of cold hands I guess my hands are hot so but but the good news is is that if you don't want to do this step by hand you can use the food processor for this first part and that'll just minimize the amount of contact you're gonna have with it but but I really like doing it by hand because I think it gives you the best the old for it overall yeah I have a question for you go for it let's say like the butter starting to get a little melty like how does it affect the pie - yes so basically we want the pie and all the ingredients cold at every single stage and the reason is because we want it to be it leads to that flakiness that it kind of the desired end result so the way that you get the flakiness is by the moisture that's in the butter the water content when it hits the eat of the oven that moisture evaporates and creates steam and that pushes the dough up and that's what makes the dough flaky so it's all about keeping if your de butter melts you're gonna end up with something that's a little bit crumbly or more like cookie dough almost you get like a flatter exactly and that's not a bad thing but that's you know if we're talking about that really flaky delicious pie crust which is what we're gonna make today yeah we want to do a couple of things and one is keep everything really cold you can help it a few different ways make sure everything's cold in the fridge before you even start using it you can even chill your flour and the bowl that you're making it in before you start so if you're somebody who has hot hands and you want to skip the food processor you can do all of those things but you can also at any point if you feel like it's melting just pop it in the fridge it's not you know it's not that's good advice because like if I produce in the fridge between minutes and going it's all good absolutely so the first thing we're gonna do we're just gonna toss all the cubes so that they're fully coated in flour before that and that's just sort of gonna help us with the process for one thing now there's a little layer of starch that's gonna prevent it from melting is this like a standard science butter cube or do you use larger cubes than the average I always start with about a half an inch cube and you don't need to go smaller than that people are often actually surprised when we're done mixing the snow people sometimes are really shocked at how little I've mixed the butter in so you definitely don't want to make them too much smaller than this they could be a little bigger than this it's just gonna mean more time mixing so then what we're gonna do is we're just gonna take the cubes of butter and we're going to squish them between our fingers yeah and every time you squish a piece you kind of want to toss it make sure it's still coated with flour it's just gonna help it again from not melting and it's also kind of getting them combined which is what we're going and basically what we're gonna do is we're just gonna keep doing this and then until we get to the right amount and how do you know what the right amount is how do you know for a flaky pie crust which is what I usually use for fruit pies we would want to leave the butter about the size of walnut halves so this got makes a little bit more than yours no no that's good that that's about right for a mealy cross okay so I think you're perfect and that'll be a great pie crust for their pumpkin pie or a pecan any kind of custardy pie okay so now we're gonna make a well in the center just like make a hole and we're gonna start adding ice water now you can be really precise with this and use a tablespoon measure to kind of help you track how much you're adding but really the this part is all about hydrating and every brand of flour is gonna hydrate differently so if you learn to do it by eye then you don't have to be so in your head quite about it I like things like this where you sort of have sense-memory totally exactly and you can kind of just get the hang of it so I'm gonna start by adding just a few tablespoons like about two or three tablespoons into the well and then what I do at first is I kind of start by using this tossing motion so kind of like tossing the flour like this rather than mixing it this just helps us build up less gluten while still combining the ingredients and I know gluten can be a dirty word but it it sort of is in pie crust because the more gluten you form the tougher the dough is gonna be and that's gonna be that thing so like let's say like if you have your kid helping you okay and they're like kneading the dough kneading the dough you're gonna get a really tough across let's put it this way when I make pie dough with my niece's yeah I'm doing this part they squish the butter I add the water so I'm gonna add another tablespoon ish to my dough and I'm just gonna keep doing this until it starts to come together and as it gets closer I like to actually kind of fold it over onto itself it's kind of a kneading motion but not as intense as bread kneading you're just kind of being gentle with it right now this is what always happens to me is like this much of my dough has come together and then this much is kind of powder okay so what I do is I literally just take that part that's all come together and I set it aside and I just add a little bit of water to this part and sometimes at this stage when you only need a little more water it can be quite difficult to just that a little so what I do is I dip my hands into the water and just like flick the water on it and that way I'm not adding too much at one time and when it's too dry it looks sort of powdery and it doesn't hold together as well but it can really be the matter of like a couple of drops of water to be just right so you're see it's holding together but you can even see there's like visible cracks where it's still looking kind of clumpy yes you've got it - you're perfect so if it's a little too dry you can tell because these cracks are more visible and there's actually like powdery pieces that haven't been properly hydrated and when it's too wet it'll be really like sticky to the touch that can also happen if your butter melts a lot while you're working so if you are ever not sure just toss it in the fridge for a little while before you continue and if you have if it's too wet basically what you can do is refrigerate it let it chill out for a little bit and then roll it out using a lot more flour than you normally would and it's gonna absorb that flour normally that isn't what you want to do if your dough is just right if your dough's a little bit too wet you can just give it a little extra flour at that rolling stage to kind of help bring it back to where it feels very well and now we're gonna get to the fun part which is actually rolling it out so you'll just form it into a disk and we'll chill this sure and then we can wash our hands and bring out the dough that we already made cheers Cheers okay so we chilled our dough for about thirty minutes minimum okay I like to chill it a little longer but thirty minutes is usually enough to let the gluten relax and get your butter firm enough to roll so we're gonna flour our surface and what I like to do is actually be pretty generous with the flour at the beginning and then ideally not have to add much more as I continue to roll it is important to remember that all the flour you're incorporating it is getting worked into the dough canadough get to dry at this point yes it definitely can so just be you know err on the side like I said I kind of know about you know a small handful for me is enough for me to roll out the whole dough do this entire process so I kind of like to start by pushing from the center up and down and then I rotate it and part of the reason I rotate it while they work is just to make sure it's not getting stuck to the surface you can also then if it is like that just there I felt a little bit of sticking so I can just kind of make sure that that bit gets a little more flour you ever felt like the whole thing yeah definitely yeah you can flip it and one thing to remember is that then like this side is the side that was down so it has more flour on it than the other side so you can even at this stage if I'm not sure if that's too much I can brush it off you can see in my dough here you can see pieces of butter this is more like a flaky dough and then the one that you have is the mealy dough and you just see less visible butter it's in there it's just not as the sturdy sturdy I know it feels like I know it's not I've used that word for years and I know it's not the best if someone is very enthusiastic is it possible to roll - yes it definitely isn't and this where I'm at right now is about what you're looking for it's anywhere between 1/8 and 1/4 of an inch thick I kind of like to err on the side of being a smidge thicker than 1/8 just cuz it makes it easier to handle but about 1/8 of an inch is what most recipes are gonna say and that's that's pretty accurate if you roll your dough too thin what I would recommend doing is actually just folding it into quarters and putting it back in the fridge letting it rest for a little bit longer and then you can reuse it and the folding action kind of will just give it some more layers it's sort of like making rough puff pastry so that's something that you can you can do to save it if you roll it too thin and it should be you know it's thick enough that I could even pick it up like this but if it's thin enough that when I picked it up it's gonna rip and tear that's usually too good an indicator so when I get it to about the right width usually what I do is I like to turn the pie plate upside down and if it's at least one inch wider all the way around like so I would roll yours a little bit more just to make sure you got enough on that side and you'll see why because I have something I like to do with that other side so now what I do is I roll it up on to the rolling pin and you can at this point actually if you see that there's too much flour you can kind of brush it away as you roll it up there's one of my favorite tricks to move the pie dough yeah me too it just feels and it also like you know just feels like a trick for real and then we just kind of unfurl it over so satisfying and then I just kind of pick it up at the hedges to nudge it into the into the pie plate and can I screw up here like if this is not we can just move it over so yeah just pick it up perfect like just like that and then yeah we can just kind of press it in that's a great example of like those are the kinds of things that are always gonna happen if it's not perfectly round and it doesn't need to be perfectly round so much of this we're gonna trim away right now right so don't freak out if yours ends up any more of a square okay so now we're gonna use one of my favorite tools which are the scissors you could use a knife and since you're you know a chef you might be more comfortable with a knife but I think this is easier for a lot of people at home because you can trim off the excess and kind of keep an eye on where you're cutting okay so I just basically trim it so that there's only about a half inch access all the way around so once you get about a half an inch excess all the way around again you can see mine's not perfect and so we're just kind of folding it under to meet flush with the edge but we've got that excess built in there now and I like to give it a good press because make sure that the dough kind of isn't here because if you just fold it under and you have a lot of flour it might not stick to the dough and you know it could pop out on you in the oven because our dough is so flaky so mine looks a little different than yours it looks great this is this is years and years of pie making you know and I'm gonna show you kind of how to even that crust now because just by nature different parts of it are gonna be a little bit thicker a little bit whatever and that's kind of what you have here so what I would do now is just sort of go along and with my fingers and kind of even it out like this and that's gonna help any points where it's too thick any point where there's like a divot like this you can even kind of push it up yeah okay so it's time to chill it again because you've usually handled it a decent amount by then [Music] so the first crimp is a classic finger crimp and for that are you left-handed or right now so it'll be the same but you'll use you use your dominant hand to make like a v-shape with your thumb and forefinger you did it just like that the pie is done and then you'll use your non the pointer finger of your non-dominant hand to kind of press towards it and down so you're trying you're moving your fingers towards each other but you're also kind of pressing down and that's what's adhering it to the pie plate you're doing great I screwed up that that one that's okay I'll go back and fix them I actually always like to go back at the end and sometimes I'm feeling like a point to your crimp sometimes they end up a little more rounded and so sometimes half it ends up half in half and I go back and fix them a little bit okay yeah you're doing great right you know the only other thing is you do even though you're wanting to press down and pressing in you don't want to press so hard that you tear the crust that's really the only thing that would be too aggressive at this stage so I'm gonna show you an even easier crimp now where all you need is a fork you can just dip your fork a little bit in flour and just kind of press straight down all the way around the hive but I like to do this I think it's a little bit fancier and it's just as easy so I kind of pressed the fork at an angle like this and press down and then make the fork go the other angle the other direction and the only thing you have to be careful about just like with you know using your fingers is you don't want to rip or tear the dough the main reason you want to avoid that is that you don't want to risk any filling leaking through the actual dough that's gonna make your pie get all burnt it's gonna make it stick in the pan make it hard to get a slice out so you want to use a firm but gentle hand you just notice this pattern it's very when it's finished I actually I enjoy doing this sometimes but it is you can kind of mix the crimp styles you could you know do two forks like this and then a couple of finger prints and then you could you know even do a finger print and press the fork in between the Crim yeah okay so for a double crust pie the whole style of how you get to the crimp is just a little bit different so I wanted to show you that too since you've got to across we've got our filling under there some the first crest is is what we did yeah but it's still hanging off it's hanging in the folded underneath nope not yet it's the same amount of excess still a half an inch excess all the way around we got our filling in and then we unfurled the top crust off the pin the same way that you would the idea here is to press the top crust and the bottom crust together a little bit so pretty firmly all the way around I'm just gonna pinch the top crust on the bottom crust together it's like a giant ravioli it is speaking my language and you get pretty firm with it just like you would with pasta to make sure that they're really like combined together yeah and then I'll trim away the excess okay to about a half an inch again okay so now I'm just gonna do the same thing that we did before and just fold this under all the way around the pie and that way the top crust is like even tucked underneath the bottom crust yeah so there really is no risk of them kind of coming apart in the oven so just tuck it under all the way around and then we're gonna crimp and for this one we're gonna do one of my favorite styles which is called the wrote crimp this is easy it's just the same exact technique but with two pie dough's exactly together okay so now we're gonna do the rope crimp which is a pretty easy one you just do it with your two pointer fingers like this and you just kind of take the dough at an angle you would just kind of put your finger at the base of where the last one ends and squeeze in between your fingers like this to me feels like trickier than that and it's funny because just thank you I like I didn't feel nervous until this try it out I think it might be easier than you think so you were doing like this kind of mode yep can you just do it again yep all right okay what if i smush it too much yeah that's good yeah we can always go back and even it out after we've done the whole thing cuz sometimes again once you get going you get the groove of it man okay I'm feeling it's easy right and it's also like you like you're just gonna be I was nervous for no reason it's fine all right this is nice it is nice right so we've done three different crimp styles and they're all beautiful and now they're basically ready for baking the double crust pie we would just need to do a little bit of finishing to it I would a get maybe put a little turbinado sugar or Demerara or something on top with a double crust do you always need to cut slats into it or can you sometimes bake it with no air holes Oh pretty much better to cut the slats or the the vents of that sort because they're gonna let all the steam out and especially the steam from fruit yeah as the fruit cooks down it's gonna let out a lot of steam and it just makes for a less it makes your top crust a little crisper if you let that steam the one tip for cutting the vents and it's to do that after you've applied any finishes like egg wash or sugar because those finishes can actually close the vents back up these single crust pies would either be ready to be filled and baked just as is or you could par bake or blind bake them if someone is totally inexperienced what is par baking or does that mean so par baking stands for partial baking and that's something that you might want to do for a pie crust or for a pie filling that has is wetter so like a custard filling like pumpkin you've ever had a soggy bottom on your pumpkin pie it's just because the amount of time it takes for that pumpkin custard to bake isn't as long as it takes for the full pie crust to bake so before you add your wet filling you want to do something with just the raw price yes you would doc it all over with a fork like this just to make it's gonna be so flaky you want to like pierce it to make sure that it doesn't get too many air pockets I even dock the sides like this remember that these holes will fill up when it bakes so it's not too worried about filling leaking through them later then put a piece of parchment paper and fill it with pie ways I like to tell people to fill it all the way up to this edge because that's the only way it's really weighted down if you only fill it up to here then this whole part isn't weighted and you're gonna have that's when you can have issues up the crust kind of sloping in on you or even this part will puff up and then the rest of it will be flat and it'll seem very odd so you fill it with high waves yes so I usually it takes three pounds of dried beans to do it pretty much two and a half to fill it up all the way but it really makes a difference and it's worth it if you're gonna do the part baking and so for par baking you bake it for about 12 to 15 minutes just until it barely starts to brown then you would take the pie weights out they get for a couple minutes more and par baking as I'm gonna show you with the finished pies I par bake both of the single crust pies and it makes a huge difference in how Brown the bottom crust is it's kind of amazing I really recommend it I'm gonna taste some pie right yes please okay now before we get started there's two people from the office they're gonna come in okay some pie with us hey you're ready so tell the world who you are thanks for coming to eat pie with us oh I love your place so much well before we eat I want to show you guys my favorite pie party trick which is a really excellent one to pull out for your family and friends at Thanksgiving if you choose to par bake people don't always know this but that if you bake your pie properly it should pop right out of the pie plate it won't stick in the high plate at all so we're gonna try it with this one and see usually it's a good indicator you can kind of like twist it a few times see this one's gonna come right out so I'll just kind of grab it underneath and then you can just cut it right on the thing right it's kind of amazing okay so for our taste test we're kind of focusing on the crust today I can cut right on here yeah yeah well this this is an uncrackable pumpkin pie because it doesn't have an X in it so I would just eat it right now you want to hand me one of those plates yeah what are your thoughts in ceramic versus black ceramic is my favorite because it conducts heat the best glass is my second favorite just because you can actually look at it and see if it's brown enough yeah and then my Emin metal they really all work well yeah it's just a matter of understanding what you might need to do to tweak it and so you might want it with metal pans since they don't conduct heat quite as well they might have you might want to carve it this is such a thing it gets I know I love that sound right whatever just so amazed by again this is still the Miele your crust but it still is flaky that's why I like hesitate to use those words many times but my other favorite part is that your fork can go right through it because I don't want it tough pie crust at Thanksgiving comments about them so this pie mic that one of my favorite things is that we do this technique where you fold under at the edge and it actually makes it even flake here so you can see it right here and you can see it on your slices - well you've combined like two crusted exactly and so not only is the dough already flaky and when you fold it under you're almost making more layers and you can see that in the soup so this is slow this is like the single crust and then this is like a bottom and the top combined to create that extra you would you have to be careful the thicker your crust is at the edge it's easier to primp but it also takes longer than that yeah so I always give people the advice that you really shouldn't be afraid of taking your pie like too far except for maybe things like that cracking so taste that flakiness it looks like a clean like me like did you do an egg wash and a brown shirt yes egg wash and I like turbinado or Demerara sugar this is the cider caramel apple pie and what do you think about the difference no no I'm not gonna get rid of them oh I was cleaning up the pie crumbs when she got hold on open your mouth I'll sprinkle them in they are precious I know get rid of it but what do you guys think the pie crusts are actually really similar the only real difference is and cuz that's the thing I think people they don't want their custard pie dough to be any less flaky but just by that little addition oh yeah look at that modest look just by that little addition of mixing the butter in a little bit more it just makes it a little bit sturdier and easier to work with and you'll even kind of see it it's harder to look at the bottom crust on a juicy pie like this but like you can see that it's the nice thing is is that it's browned but we still have a nice thin layer because if it's too thick it'll be hard to get your horse on the flaky crust do you think you can taste the butter more or is that in my name I do I do you sort of felt that because there are bigger patches of it when it goes that was my first impression between the two press that this is like a little more toasty you may be and this is buttery yeah and the ratio is exactly the same so it is just a matter of manipulation and I like that I like having one solid base recipe yeah that you know how to handle and you can make a couple different things yes thank you guys so much for coming and tasting the piling on you liked the difference yes I loved it gonna make this one and this one and then and then you're gonna take that with you why I can I can accept that oh and I won so for me I think the thing I'm gonna take away is the same exact ingredients can yield two slightly different pie pie dough's totally depending on how finely you work with the butter absolutely and getting in there with your hands kind of allows you to feel those differences and know what you're working with and then it kind of comes down to muscle memory the more pies you bake the better at it you're gonna get and even if you think a crimp is very difficult josh is proof that they're all yeah are you doing if I can do it then anyone can well should we have a pie crust cheers we had it one with our raw dough Cheers thanks for tuning in mm-hmm I made this whole thing me already did [Music]

Channel: Food52

Views: 519,580

Keywords: Food52, food, cooking, recipe, chef, foodie, cook, home cooking videos, erin mcdowell, erin mcdowell pie crust, pie crust recipe, pie recipe, pie crust, pie crust designs, pie crust hacks, pie crust from scratch, pie crust tasty, pie crust ideas, pie baking, pie dough, pie dough recipe, pie dough from scratch, pie dough recipe by hand, pie hacks, best pie crust recipe, best pie crust, all butter pie crust, all butter pie crust recipe

Id: jT3UZ4qI1ro

Length: 25min 19sec (1519 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 15 2018