The Best Pie Crust

by Gabi // 2011/11/29

The best pie crust, in my humble (pie) opinion, is this all-butter pie crust which I have tweaked over the years. It has a great flavor, is flaky and doesn’t leave the roof of your mouth feeling greasy as shortening based crusts tend to do. Plus, I just don’t like shortening. 😛

Gabi’s Best Pie Crust

2-1/2 cups unbleached All Purpose wheat flour
1 cup cold, cold butter, salted or unsalted as you have on hand and cut into small bits
large pinch of salt if using unsalted butter, smaller if using salted
2 Tablespoons granulated sugar, can omit if making a savory pie
1/2 cup of iced water (a bit more or less as humidity requires)

That’s it. If using a food processor, place the flour, salt and sugar into the work bowl fitted with the metal blade. Pulse a few times. Add the butter and pulse until only a few pea sized bits of butter coated with the flour mixture remain. It should look like coarse sand or cornmeal. Place a few ice cubes into a 1 cup liquid measuring cup and add cold water, let sit for a minute then remove the ice cubes and pour off all but 1/2 cup of the water. Add to the processor whilst pulsing, add just enough for the dough to become a bit moist and start to clump together. Remove the top of the processor bowl and dump the bowl onto a square of cling film (plastic wrap) on your counter or work surface. Use the cling film to gather the crumbly, shaggy dough together into a uniform shape so you can divide it in half. Cut in half with a bench knife or something not too sharp, taking care to not cut through the cling film. Put half of the dough onto another square of cling film and gently shape each half into a disk on its own piece of cling film. Wrap securely and chill until ready to use- or at least a half hour. Can be made a day ahead and kept refrigerated or frozen for up to a month. Thaw in the fridge overnight before rolling out, if frozen. Roll while chilled out, let it sit for no more than 5 minutes out of the fridge before rolling, to about an 1/8″ inch (3mm) thickness. Makes enough for 1 double crust or two single crust pies. This recipe can be doubled easily.

If you don’t have a food processor, or just prefer to make it by hand, mix the flour, salt and sugar together, then cut or rub in the butter to the flour mixture using cold hands or two table knives. Add the iced water bit by bit until the dough starts to come together and proceed as above.

You can line a pie plate simply or decorate with a lattice, cut out leaves or a crimp. Rick made the beautiful lattice pictured first for his Thanksgiving Apple Pie this year. I love a man who can make a beautiful pie, don’t you?

This crust likes an initial blast of heat and then a reduction depending on the filling or whether it is being baked “blind”, something like 400F to start for 10 minutes and then reduced to 350F to 325F for the duration of a filled pie. I like to paint the top or rim with an egg wash of a beaten egg mixed with some cream to make it golden and shiny.

Next time I post I’ll give you the recipes for my new favorite Pecan Pie and Pumpkin and Apple Pies as well so we’ll all be set for the upcoming Holidaze!

Toad-in-the-Hole for a Blustery Day

by Gabi // 2011/11/18

Ye Olde Toad-in-the-Hole.

With Autumn fastening her chilly grip on our days the thought of something warm and comforting for dinner is needed. So luckily I came across this recipe in Saveur for Toad-in-the-Hole with onion gravy, a lovely combination of pork sausages wrapped in bacon and baked on top of a batter resulting in crispy browned Yorkshire Pudding and sizzling sausages. Perfect!

I did change the onion gravy a bit (you know who doesn’t eat beef -even in stock) and substituted streaky bacon instead of Prosciutto to wrap half of the sausages, because well $1.00 for a slice of di Parma seemed a bit much for this dish and my current frugality. The bacon didn’t cling as well as the Prosciutto di Parma but that was okay because it rested on top of the sausages and Yorkshire pudding and got nice and crispy.

Onion Gravy with Chicken Stock

One jumbo or two large yellow onions, thinly sliced
3 Tablespoons butter
1 Tablespoon all purpose flour
2 cups chicken stock
1/3 cup Marsala wine
2 Tablespoons Tawny Port
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon Kitchen Bouquet Browning and Seasoning sauce*
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the onions in the butter in a medium saucepan over medium low heat until they are golden, stir them often as they cook to prevent scorching. When they are caramelized to a medium golden brown, add the flour and cook for a minute or two just to coat the flour with fat and cook it a bit. Add the stock, wine and Worcestershire, bring to the boil and cook for a few minutes until it starts to thicken a bit. Remove from heat and stir in the Kitchen Bouquet and taste. Add salt and pepper if needed.

*Kitchen Bouquet is a flavoring sauce that is made from caramelized vegetables and spices. It is available in most grocery stores in the U.S.A. You could probably use Vietnamese Caramel Sauce in its place.

I made our typical house salad with Parmesan, pine nuts and shallot-Dijon vinaigrette to accompany and that along with a nice glass of Cider was that! We snuggled under a blanket, warmed by comfort food

and watched Veronica Mars on DVD- highly recommended as a superior TV show but sadly cancelled before its time.

Pizza Party for Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in 5 Minutes a Day

by Gabi // 2011/11/15

Today there is a Pizza Party around the world that is being hosted by Zoe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg, M.D. , the authors of “Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day.”

For the last year or so, Rick and I have been working on a wood fired pizza oven in our back garden. So this was a fun event to unveil the (almost) completed oven and share this great book with you too. To family and friends who have been (patiently) waiting for a pizza party- it’s on its way- I promise. 🙂 We’ve just been working on the practical aspects of using the oven. The doughs in the book will be helpful because we can mix up different batches of dough without a lot of time or effort and have them on hand for when the time is right to fire up the oven.

I have a separate post planned for when the last bit is complete on the oven to show you how we made it and the different stages of completion- so more on that later. Right now let’s party with some pizza!

First gather the book and a few ingredients. I used four liter buckets to mix each dough in, instead of the 5 quarts recommended because it was either them or a 6qt which takes up too much space in my fridge. So here are the ingredients. I made the “00” flour variation of the Ultimate Tender Neopolitan Crust from page 73- because I happen to have about 40lbs of Caputo “00” flour from Central Milling on hand. It’s in the 5 Gallon bucket with the red lid pictured. The blue crock is my salt cellar.

I also made the “Cornmeal Olive Oil dough” on page 86, although I substituted purple cornmeal for the yellow listed. I know- I’m a rebel. Plus I had some to use up. 🙂

I like to use my King Arthur (thingamajig) mixing tool that my sister, Tonya, gave to me a few years ago for mixing things up in the buckets. It works great! Funny note: It’s in a gift box on their site featured with Bread in 5’s book. 🙂

This is what the doughs look like after raising and being chilled overnight:

So fire up the oven…

Rick just finished the spire on top of the onion dome. There is more to do but it works and more on the pizza oven to come in a later post.

It makes a great fire.

Toppings:

San Marzano tomatoes that I bottled this Summer from our garden, whizzed in the blender with a little salt and then strained make a delicious sauce.

I make pesto during the summer and freeze it in flexible ice cube trays. Just thaw and use.

Cubed Turkey Breast, Goat cheese, Brie, Ricotta, Fresh and shredded Mozzarella, BBQ sauce, San Marzanos, pesto, homemade Béchamel, Ambrosia Apple, artichoke hearts, cooked sweet Italian sausage and pepperoni, shallots, onions and red peppers.