Don’t Roll Out Pie Crusts and Do This Instead
Rolling out puff pastry is a pain in the ass. It is temperature sensitive, needs a cosmetic rest in the refrigerator, and even in the best conditions it can crack under pressure. Well, the good news is you’ll never have to roll out another pie crust. You can stop the unreliable transfer of dough from the table to the pie plate. Instead of planning on the dreaded worry of repairing cracked dough, try one of these two ways to dent a pie crust. No rolling. There is no rise. Just pour in the dough and knead.
Prepare the sucre pâté crust
Sucre pâté is a simple sweet pastry. It is high in fat and sugar, making it crumbly, buttery and tender. Sounds familiar? This is exactly the profile we are looking for in a pie crust. The granular sugar content, as well as the short strand of gluten (thanks to the butter), allows for many break points in the dough, meaning that while you can roll this dough out, it will likely tear at those break points if you try to lift the entire sheet. This is fine, you can easily fix the tears, but you can also just toss the lumps of dough into the pie pan and squeeze it out. The structure of the dough will remain tender, and the high fat content will allow you to easily close up any cracks by pressing them with your fingertips. Plus, it tastes like a cookie that cradles the filling for your pie.
Sucre pâté is usually made using the flour method, which involves breaking butter into dry ingredients until it resembles sand. I usually use a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment to take care of this part. This process forms tiny balls of butter and sugar, so even when you add an egg and a little liquid to gently bind them together, the dough remains tender. Once the dough is mixed, it will retain its crumbly yet moist nature. Place as much as you need into the pie dish and use a spatula or fingers to squeeze it out and lift it around the edges of the plate. You can also use a flat-bottomed measuring cup to squeeze out the dough if it seems uneven. Bake according to the pie recipe you are working with. Please note that this is a sweet dough that is best suited for sweet pies. For a pressed crust that is suitable for both sweet and savory…
Use Liquid Fats
The problem with oil-based crusts is fiddling around with making flakes. Unreliable this and unreliable this. Enough! Tender dough doesn’t always require paper-thin layers of butter. You can make short dough (short strands of gluten instead of long, chewy ones like in lean bread) with butter. Using a butter-based crust recipe like this one from King Arthur makes for the perfect low-stress pie dough, and it’s also a vegan option.
There is no need to cut the butter, let the dough rest or roll it out, this method basically consists of two main steps. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl and whisk oil and water in a measuring cup. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and stir with a fork until smooth. Pour the batter into a pie pan and flatten with any tool, be it the bottom of a jar or your fingertips. Convinced that you will miss the oily taste? You can modify this recipe by replacing the butter with the same amount of melted butter. Bake or blind bake according to pie recipe directions.