Got this question over the weekend: Why can’t you just leave [the pie crust mix] in the bag to mix it with the water [and vinear]? What about if you use the 2.5 gal food bags from hefty? …accompanied by this cryptic little aphorism/threat: Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons…for you are crunchy […]
READ ONRather an accommodation with the realities of commerce. I’ve started running ads on the site. What can I say? I thought I’d give it a try and see if I actually made any money. If I pull in the expected $0.63 this month, I’ll take it down. Weigh in if you have an opnion, for […]
READ ONThe same basic rules for peach pie apply to all double-crust fruit pies. For double-crust pies are made by a slightly different method than open-faced pies. Unlike open-faced pies, double-crust pie crusts are not “blind”-baked (i.e. partially baked without the filling inside). Thus extra measures have to be taken to prevent the bottom crust from […]
READ ONReader Nancy wrote in yesterday to say: Hey Joe, I love your blog. Don’t you want to charm your readers even more by mentioning the term “coffin” for a crust? And indeed I do, for I neglected to mention that in Medieval and especially Renaissance Europe, the big, thick tupperware-like pie crusts I blogged about […]
READ ONWhat an appalling waste of pastry that terrible film was. A nightmare, really. But that’s not what I’m here to discuss. I wish to re-frame pie, not as a European food (for indeed Continentals eat very little pie nowadays), but as the ultimate colonial baked good. Granted, Americans collectively eat a lot less pie than […]
READ ONYou know the feeling. You get it when you take a bite of a pie from one of those big chain restaurants. It’s tender, it chews OK, but once you swallow it there’s that lingering film on your tongue and in the inside of your mouth. It’s fat, more specifically vegetable fat (oil), that’s been […]
READ ONI could write up another complete post on the subject, but I don’t think I could do better that the “Old Ladies in Fist Fights” post under the Biscuit Method link to the right.
READ ONFor all you mixing method fanatics out there (and aren’t they just everywhere in our culture these days?) wondering what mixing category pie dough falls into, the answer is: the biscuit method. It’s easy to see the resemblances…the “cutting in” of fat by hand, the emphasis on minimal handling, this despite the fact that biscuits […]
READ ONI can already see the list of emails in my in box complaining about the complexity of this technique. Pie dough, at least for most people, should be a simple operation. All I can say is, first, that it’s really not all that complicated, and second, that this is the method that gives me the […]
READ ONBut then what if you lived in a city or a town? For that stripe of pre-industrial European pie lover, there were pie specialists — professionals to whom you could take your edible miscellany, and who for a fee would put it into a pre-made crust and bake it up for you. In France such […]
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