Pies are the third most popular American desserts following ice creams and cookies.

Considering the amount of work you put in, you get more mileage out of pies than from any other

dessert, considering both taste and eye appeal. Attain the experience to make a good pie dough

quickly, and you have the basis for making a very good dessert for any occasion. Most fillings,

whether simple or elaborate, are reasonably easy to make, even with meringue, whipped cream or

any other topping. You can even prepare the dough (or baked crust) days in advance and finish it in

no time on the day you plan to serve it fresh from the oven.

If you use a good recipe and good ingredients, preparing a delicious pie or tart has only one

secret: you must make your own crust. Commercial food processors learned how to make quite

acceptable cake mixes, frozen cakes and a number of other frozen pastries, but they haven't

managed to produce a good fresh or frozen pie dough or crust.

If pie crust is not yet on your list of skills, take a few hours and learn how to do it. The

ingredients are inexpensive, even if you have to throw a dozen doughs or crusts out before your

thirteenth attempt is a winner. Once you master the technique, making your own crust is a snap.

A simple way to learn is to watch someone who is good with pie dough. Or learn it by

yourself from books or videos. It helps to understand what happens in the dough so don't skip this

section.

What goes into it?

Pie dough has only four ingredients: flour, salt, fat and water. Tart pastry has the same four

ingredients plus sugar and maybe egg.

Commercial bakers use pastry flour specifically made for pies. Like cake flour, they mill it

from low-protein and high-starch soft wheat to promote tenderness. Pastry flour is not as finely

milled as cake flour. Don’t try to use cake flour for pie dough. It is too fine-grained, and tends to

paste up when you add liquid. Specialized pastry flour is not available to most home cooks, but you

can mix cake flour with bread flour in a 7:3 ratio and come close to commercial pastry flour. But

that is hardly necessary—all-purpose flour is quite suitable, too, and you always have it on your

shelf.

Salt is an essential ingredient and does not vary in amount, without salt the crust tastes flat.

Use ¼ teaspoon salt for every cup of flour.

The amount of water you need, however, varies with the humidity, your climate and the

amount of moisture in your flour and fat. Recipes give an approximate amount, but start with

smaller than called for, and add more little at a time to arrive at the correct, easily workable dough

consistency.

Fat is also a variable. What fat you choose and how much you use makes a huge difference

in the consistency, texture, flakiness and flavor of your pie crust.

The role of fat in the dough

The fat's ability to interfere with the formation of gluten is called its shortening power. What

happens is that the fat coats the protein grains in the flour and keep them from absorbing moisture.

Without moisture the proteins cannot convert into gluten, that elastic sheet-like substance so

essential for good breads but a killer in pie dough. Lard, vegetable shortening and oil have high

shortening power. Butter and margarine have less because they are not all fat—they contain about

16 percent water (while other fats have none).

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