Do You Really Need to Chill the Pie Dough?
Everyone knows that cold butter is required to make a cake worthy of a kiss, so most recipes recommend chilling the dough twice: once after kneading and again after assembling the cake. The downside is that rolling cold dough sucks, so you’ll have to wait for it to heat up ( or stew a little) first, which will add at least another hour to your baking schedule.
That is, unless you give up and completely miss the initial cooling. Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely arguments for chilling the dough before rolling it out, especially if you do it ahead of time, but that doesn’t mean you should . You can go straight from mixing to rolling and assembling and nothing bad will happen. In fact, your pie will probably turn out better .
Less cold – less waiting
The first and most obvious plus of skipping this first chilling step is that it will actually cut your prep time in half. A cold dough can take an hour to heat up to 75ºF, but if you keep the thermostat anywhere below 70ºF, that hour can easily take two or even three hours – and that’s not counting the time it took for it to cool in the first place. … Considering that making pies is a long and complicated process, it can be a pretty big deal, especially on a big culinary day like Thanksgiving.
Warmer dough is easier to work with
Even slightly cooled dough is prone to cracking, crumbling, and generally doesn’t behave the way you want it to. (I’ve been making pies for over a decade, and half of my attempts still look like Millennium Falcon.) But the dough is pliable and soft at room temperature. Not only is it easier to deploy, it’s also less likely to be hacked – and if it does, it will actually stick to itself, so you can fix everything without any problem.
This last feature is more important than it sounds. The dough that sticks to itself can be shaped as you like, and after it has cooled down to shape, it stays that way . Whether you are making a simple corrugated edge or an intricate herringbone lattice decorated with cutouts, starting with a soft, pliable dough, your decorations will survive in the oven at their best.
How to do it
This technique is as easy as it sounds: cook your favorite pie crust recipe and skip the initial cooling step. Roll out the dough quickly, but unless the kitchen is above 75ºF there is no cause for concern. Your hands are the main source of heat in this scenario, and they are unlikely to warm your rolling pin and meters to 90 ° F – the temperature at which oil usually begins to melt.
This eliminates some downtime, so you can adjust the preparation for filling. Quiche with a crust works best when you add hot custard to hot freshly baked crust blind , so keep that in mind when planning time. For double crust pies, prepare the filling before kneading the dough. If you chill the harvested pie (or plate with crust) thoroughly before baking, the butter will be cold enough when it gets into the hot oven.