Tie Back the Sugar Pie
Blind crusts for baking a pie should be as simple as line the chilled dough with parchment or foil, top with dried beans to weigh it down, and bake until crisp. This is fine in most cases, but for a really crispy crust without puffy spots, use sugar.
I’ve been making pies for years, but until I changed the weight from dry chickpeas to plain old white sugar – a trick I learned from Supreme Pastry Genius Stella Parks – blind baking confused me every time. It turns out that dry beans are the worst cake by weight. They’re actually not all that heavy and, depending on their individual size, they won’t fill every crevice in the lined confectionery shell. Fine granulated sugar particles are evenly distributed over the entire surface, providing a smooth, perfectly baked shell; Plus, the sugar is very dense, so it makes your crust heavier when baked. Best of all, instead of burdening you with a bunch of odd-tasting beans, a few rounds of blind baking with sugar will leave you with a delicious new ingredient: toasted sugar . You can’t use it indefinitely – replace it with fresh sugar when it turns golden brown, which will take three to four hours in the oven – but it’s definitely a better alternative. (One round of blind baking won’t make your beans too weird , but what’s more, they’ll dry them out too much.)
If you prefer parchment or foil, you can start blind baking sugar right away with one important adjustment. Dry sugar will burn at temperatures above 350 ° F, so if you typically blindfold at 425 ° F, lower heat. It will take longer, but since you don’t have to fumble with removing the weights and liner halfway through, it’s much easier too. After an hour at 350ºF, you will have a perfectly golden brown crunchy pie shell that will withstand any filling you can throw into it, without the bottom getting wet .