How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall?

I am sure that you know the answer to the age old question. Practice, practice, practice. And how do you acquire the necessary skills that enable you to bake that perfect pie crust? Well it’s pretty much the same answer.  After many, many years of rolling out and baking pie crusts, I can guarantee you that I am still practicing and learning. It is truly amazing how elusive perfection can be with a simple recipe that really has only five ingredients, flour, sugar, salt, fat, and water. And what defines perfection? Perfection is reached when the finished crust crumbles in your mouth with just the right amount of crunch, flavor and flakiness. Just throwing these ingredients together, even when measurements are strictly adhered to, will not necessarily result in that perfect finished crust.

So what will continued practice achieve?  With each pie crust that you make, reviewing the results of each endeavor will increase your skills. Learning the best way to cut in the fat or knowing when more fat or liquid then recipe measurements call for is necessary, comes through repeated practice. And even after the hundredth pie crust, you still stand a chance of learning one more thing that will improve final results.

When practicing, you want to develop a feel for the dough as well as a visual of the correct consistency of the dough with the ingredients mixed together.  As an example, many recipes call for the fat to be cut in until the flour coated fat pieces are the size of peas. I have never found that to be a satisfactory measuring stick. Developing a feel of the dough that consistently yields a flaky and tasty crust will ultimately be a better guide. And that feel only comes through continued practice.

By-the-way, practicing baking a pie is far less expensive than buying a ticket for a concert at Carnegie Hall.

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Bake on.

Pie Guy