Gearhead Mom

Monday, August 03, 2009

Easy As Pie Crust

Posted by Missy W. @ 8:36 AM

We went peach picking yesterday and came home with eleven pounds of peaches. What did that mean? That meant pie for dinner! Well, okay, we threw in some other stuff, but no one cared. We were all focused on waiting for the pie to cool down enough to devour it in one sitting.

Let’s be clear, I am a haphazard baker at best. The words Pie Crust alone put my hair on fire. That’s where my mom’s pie crust comes into play. Actually it’s her old friend Sally’s recipe, but my mom has carried the same ratty 3 x 5 card around for over 40 years. If they were still in touch, I’d send Sally a letter myself, thanking her effusively for the most BRILLIANT RECIPE ON EARTH. All four ingredients. What’s the secret? No butter. Yes, you heard me. No. Butter.

And guess what, it makes the best, flakiest, most fantastic crust ever (Hyperbole? Me? Never!). I almost feel guilty when I make it - like I’m cheating right in front of Martha Stewart’s eyes.

You want that recipe? Yeah, I bet you do.

Okay ready for it? Here we go:

1 C + 2T flour
1/2 t salt
1/3 cup Mazola (my mother swears that it’s gotta be Mazola, but I use whatever canola oil I have on hand)
2 T cold water

Sift together the flour and salt, make a little bowl in the flour, whisk in the oil, then the water. Add a touch more flour if it’s too sticky. Once it starts forming a dough, I drop the whisk and work it into a ball with my hands. Don’t overwork your dough. No chilling, no worrying about butter. Roll it out like a regular ol’ pie dough. And that’s it! That’s not to say it’s always a cake walk. If I don’t pay attention, my dough crumbles and I have to throw it out and start over. I have to beg Sy to stop talking for about four minutes (harder than we might think for her to do) so that I can concentrate on measuring exactly. But when I do totally botch the batch, I don’t feel chagrined that I’ve just wasted a pound of (expensive!) butter. Sometimes I feel like it’s a bit too salty, so if it’s not a terribly sweet pie, I might hold back a pinch or so.

Like everything else in today’s kitchen, my pie tins are way bigger than my mom’s. I tripled the recipe yesterday and got enough crust to do a regular bottom crust and a lattice top. It could be because I’m hopeless at rolling it out well. And lattice top? Forget it! It was more like a broken fence than a lattice top. In fact, I feel pretty comfortable saying it was the ugliest baked good that has ever come out of my kitchen. Too bad it’s all gone or I’d show you a picture. Luckily my family never judges a culinary creation by its cover.

By the way, it was really good pie. I used the peach/apricot/cherry pie recipe from the Martha Stewart Baking Handbook. Of course I had no apricots or cherries, so I just used all peaches and a tablespoon more lemon juice. Slice of heaven!

Happy Cheating Baking!

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