Can You Bake A Pie?
August 24, 2017
I just felt like baking a pie, even though the temps have been close to 100F recently. Call me crazy. Here are some tips for baking pies in general.
1) For single crust fruit filled pies, pre-bake the crust for about 10 minutes to avoid crust sogginess. I like my top crust to be a streusel type of topping made with flour, baking soda, salt, sugar, butter and buttermilk but whatever is your favorite is fine.
2) Use pie weights (look like marbles) to keep the crust from creating ridges and hollows; place the pie weights on top of a sheet of parchment paper before placing on crust.
3) Be sure to have all the ingredients for making the crust, even the flour, cold. So cold flour, cold butter, cold water. This will help ensure flakiness. Best way to incorporate the butter is to freeze it, then grate it on a cheese grater. It will blend so much easier with the flour.
4) For fruit pies, you may want to pre-cook some type of fruits to eliminate some of the liquid. This is especially good for rhubarb, blueberry, raspberry and cherry pies. I usually add clear gel, cornstarch or arrowroot as a thickener
5) Place your ready to bake pie on a sheet pan to absorb any drips that occur while baking.
6) If the topping seems to be browning faster than the bottom crust, place a sheet of aluminum foil loosely over the top
7) Use a glass pie pan; makes sense because you can see what is happening as the pie bakes.
8) Before baking, brush the top of the pie uniformly cold water; this will enhance browning of the crust.
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