Perfect Holiday Pie Crust

Confession: We LOVE pie crust in our family... flaky, buttery, lovely pie crust. And while we all have opinions about what is best IN the pie crust we all agree on the pie crust itself.

Since I talked about getting pie crust ready early for Thanksgiving here is our favorite pie crust recipe to share with you all.

This is our beloved cookbook that taught me and my daughters how to make beautiful pie crust without having to include shortening. As you can see, it is a VERY used page in a very used cookbook. What I wanted to point out is that the trick to pie crust is not so much in the ingredient list...a humble 5 ingredients... but in how you handle those ingredients. As hinted at in the fact that the recipe, though only 5 ingredients, is an entire page long. But WAIT, don't run off in fear. It only looks complicated...I made 6 pie crusts in a half hour this evening...truly simple. So let's get to it!

First, credit where credit is due. This recipe is from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman.

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
2 sticks COLD unsalted butter
ice cold water

Measure flour into a food processor bowl fitted with an S blade. 2 1/2 cups flour equal 12 1/2 oz on a scale.
Add in the salt and the sugar and pulse a couple of times to mix.

Slice the cold butter and add to the food processor. Process for 10 to 15 seconds until the flour resembles cornmeal.

Measure 6 to 10 tablespoons of ice cold water into the flour mixture. This is the only place I deviate from the recipe. The recipe says 6 tablespoons but I can never get the flour to ball together with less than 10. I have no idea why. 

Stir with a fork until the dough balls together. Pick up the dough with your hands and finish pressing it lightly into a ball. Then tear the ball into two equal pieces. 

Wrap each ball in plastic wrap, flattening it down into a disc, and then again in aluminum foil to freeze them for later. Mark Bittman says it freezes almost indefinitely.

When you are ready to bake your pies take the dough discs out of the freezer and defrost in the refrigerator. Do NOT bring the dough to room temperature. While it is still cold roll out the first disc on a well floured surface and lay in your pie plate. For a double crust fill the pie and then get the second crust out of the refrigerator and roll it out. After you have the pie put together return the pie to the refrigerator for at least 10 minutes before baking. The key to a perfect pie crust is keeping the dough cold. 

Happy pie baking. I would love to hear back from anyone who gives this a try about how it turned out. 

A Saturday List

I thought I'd tell you about my projects I'll be working on next week. It's a short list -- I try not to think about too many things to do at once. :) There's a balance to this diligence thing. If I stack up too many things to do, that discourages me instead of motivating me! But here is what I'm working on next week:

1. Socks for Ryan. He doesn't like traditional dress socks, so I'm trying to make him compromise wool socks -- dressy enough for school (he's a teacher), but comfy enough for his toes. I have one finished already, and I'm about half way through the other one! I'm using this pattern (first time with toe-up, for you sock-knitters out there!), and this yarn. This is a spare time project -- I work on it in little free moments around the day. (10-21: Check!)

2. Decluttering my magazines. I've been inspired to do this by reading this book, which is about taking small steps to simplify your life. Most of my magazines are Cooks Illustrated, so I need to go through and decide which recipes and articles I really want to keep...and which back-cover art is worth gleaning. It's a little hard, because they are chock full of such useful information! But the truth is that what is important to me, I already remember after reading once (for instance, the trick of saving your butter wrappers to grease pans with later). (10-21: Check!)

3. Making biscuits and gravy for Ryan. He's on fall break this week, so I thought it would be a nice surprise for him to have biscuits and gravy one morning. :) (I know this seems small for a project, but that is what having a baby will do to you!) (10-21: Check!)

4. Cleaning the bathroom. I try to get this done every week. ;) (10-21: Check!)

5. Deep cleaning the kitchen. (10-21: Halfway Done!)

My secret to getting anything done now that Blaze is here is to try to do it before he wakes up in the morning.

What are the projects you're working on next week? This past week I finished my thank-you notes for all the sweet presents people gave Blaze!

 Who wouldn't want to give this chubby fellow presents? But maybe they should give his mama some sense of "matching." ;) 

Watch out for an update on Monday! And have a lovely sabbath. :)
Courtney

(10-21:  Edited to show that I did some of these! Woohoo!)

A project!

Hi, my name is Courtney (everyone: Hi, Courtney!), and today I only watched half of an anime episode. (everyone: Yay, Courtney!)

Instead I did some things away from my computer! One of the things I did was tidy my poor messy dresser top. Tada!



Here it is afterwards (success! And I promise I didn't just cram everything into the drawer):



Did worthwhile things today: check. :-D

--Courtney