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HEN COMPARED with
layer cakes and French
pastries, it becomes
overly clear that pie
is one of the easiest desserts to
make. All you have to do is toss a
filling, throw it into a pie crust,
bake and enjoy.
But pie does have one thorn
in its heel, and that is the crust.
While pie itself is super easy to
make, pie crust is not as user
friendly. And for the novice baker
it can be downright scary.
But bakers, listen to us, don’t
let pie crust intimidate you. Once
you’ve tried your hand at it once
or twice (and possibly thrown a
bag of flour across the kitchen and
cursed in frustration), you’ll soon
see that you’re truly in control
when it comes to crust. There’s
really not much to it. Just take a
deep breath; keep in mind a couple of helpful tips; and remember,
that at the end of this pie crust
experience comes great pie —
many and many of them.
Here’s what you need to know for
a stress-free pie crust experience:
EAT
THIS
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• Start with cold butter. Really cold
butter. We like to throw our butter in the freezer for about 30
minutes before working with it to
make pie crust — especially dur-
ing the summer months.
• Use ice-cold water. Actually, all
your pie crust ingredients should
be ice cold. The reason you want
cold ingredients is to make sure
you don’t melt the butter before
it reaches the oven. You want to
keep the butter really cold so that
little pea-sized pieces of butter get worked into the dough
still intact — they’ll make your
pie crust perfectly flaky. Also,
working with warm butter means
working with a sticky dough and
that is a guaranteed disaster.
HUFFINGTON
11.10.13