You May Be Using the Weight of the Pie Incorrectly
I hate baking, especially when the goal is pie. I love to eat it, but I just don’t know how to make pie dough. If I manage to put the dough into a pie pan without tears or holes, it will inevitably shrink and wrinkle in some way. Fortunately, the last grief with the pie crust is quite fixable. I just need to add more pie weight.
If you’re into baking and already know you should fill your pie plate to the brim with pie weights, congratulations, you’re smarter than me (at least in that regard). I was, as millennials say, years old today when I learned that pie weights aren’t just for keeping your butt from bulging while baking; they also support parties and I have to thank The Kitchn and cookbook author Erin McDowell:
According to Erin, pie weights have a two-part job: weighting the bottom of the crust and providing support on the sides. Don’t be fooled by the small containers of pie weights you can find in stores – every time you bake a pie, you should fill the pie pan all the way to the top with the weights. This rule holds true no matter what pie weights you use, from dried beans to sugar to ceramic pie weights.
I must say I am relieved to finally have an answer to why my pie crusts shrink on the sides during blind baking . Although I am well versed in gravity as a concept, I am unable to apply any reasonable or scientific knowledge to the pie, and I did not feel that the parties needed support. (I don’t even have a pie scale—I use sugar or rice because I’m cheap—but the advice applies no matter how you choose to weight the crust.)