What are you Baking the Week of November 20, 2022?

[Mike Nolan]

I plan to do a sweet potato pie for Thanksgiving, and maybe croissants.

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[aaronatthedoublef]

It's pie time... Can I whack my pie crust before rolling it out like I would the butter in laminate dough? Will it make it more pliable? Will it make it less flaky?

Thanks

[BakerAunt]

Today, I'm preparing to bake my blueberry streusel pie. (It uses an oil crust, so I cannot answer Aaron's question, but I bet that Mike can.) I would not usually bake a blueberry pie before Thanksgiving, but my younger stepson (aka as one of my three Bonus Kids) and his wife are coming tonight for three days to spend Thanksgiving with us. They could not come this summer, so he missed out on blueberry pie so far this year, and I need to remedy that situation, as he is usually on a strict blueberry pie diet when he comes.

I will be baking a pumpkin pie on Wednesday for Thanksgiving dinner.

[Mike Nolan]

Yes, hitting the pie dough with the rolling pin several times helps to plasticize the butter, which makes it roll out easier. Butter is a fascinating thing, it has five different states: hard, semi-soft (plasticized), soft, liquid and congealed (ghee). Each of them has different properties when cooking and baking. (The butterfat in cream has several states of its own.)

Most fats have several states that often depend upon temperature.

Cocoa butter has six states that can co-exist, though they melt at different temperatures; beta-5 is the one you need when tempering it.

[aaronatthedoublef]

BA - have fun with your bonus kids! I'm sure they will enjoy the blueberry pie.

Thanks mike. I wondered about this. I wouldn't pound the butter before mixing it in because I cut it but I'll try pounding the mixed dough and let you all know.

Also, usually I just toss the butter in the flour mixture but I spent a good amount of time cutting it in. I was told by a baker friend this helps reduce shrinkage.

[Mike Nolan]

Keep in mind that when you refrigerate the crust, the flour finishes hydrating and that draws some of the water from the butter, which also reverts to its 'cold' state. Shocking the butter by hitting it several times gets it back to a plastic state.

This is one of those areas where an engineering education is helpful in the kitchen. Civil engineers study how solids can turn into flowing plastics after a seismic event. That's how a seemingly solid clay hillside can all of a sudden collapse looking like it is a liquid. Snow avalanches can result from the same type of shift from a solid to a plastic state. (They often use loud noises to encourage unstable snow masses to collapse before they would trigger major avalances.)

Kenji Lopez-Alt has an interesting take on pie crust, he turns the butter and about 3/4 of the flour into a paste in a blender, then adds in the rest of the flour before adding the water.

I've tried it, I prefer having small visible pieces of butter in the crust, but it does produce a consistently flaky crust, similar to the 'mealy' crust recipe that SFBI had us use for a bottom crust most of the time, with the 'flaky' recipe for the top crust, it has a bit more butter in it. I don't know if many production bakers tend to keep two types of pie crust on hand, though, one for a bottom crust and the other for a top crust. I generally make just the mealy crust recipe.

I will say his method appears to require a little less water, which helps prevent excessive gluten formation.

I do, however, follow his suggestion and hold back about a quarter of the flour until after the butter has been cut in. I think that also helps limit gluten formation.

[chocomouse]

I made an apple pie this morning. I've been really sick with a lung infection for 5 weeks, so standing in the kitchen for over an hour to make it was a challenge, but it shows that I am finally making progress and getting better.

[cwcdesign]

Did anyone see Claire Saffitz's new pie crust recipe in King Arthur? It's interesting and there's a video - I might have to try it
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2022/11/09/claire-saffitz-flaky-pie-crust

Chocomouse so sorry to hear about your infection. Glad to know you're on the mend

[Mike Nolan]

Using a bench knife for fraissage would be good for those of us with hot hands.

At SFBI, they had us use a chef's knife to cut in the butter the first time we made pie crust, to show us what the dough should look like. Afterwards we could use a mixer or a food processor.

[BakerAunt]

I'm glad you are feeling well enough to bake, Chocomouse. I hope that you feel better each day.

After baking the blueberry pie, I baked three loaves of Grandma A's Ranch Hand Bread, using my changes of substituting in some whole wheat flour and some bread flour, as well as replacing 75% of the water with buttermilk, the butter with 4 Tbs. olive oil, and adding flax meal and milk powder. I also cut the salt by a third. With company, depending on what people want for lunch, we might easily go through two loaves by the end of the week, as I bought some ham for sandwiches.

[BakerAunt]

What I remember about butter crusts is how time intensive they are. The oil crusts I now make (having given up eating most butter), are easier, and we like the taste and texture. I keep refining my recipe and now use a combination of pastry flour and whole wheat pastry flour, as well as half canola and half avocado oil.

[Joan Simpson]

Well wishes sent to you Chocomouse.

[Mike Nolan]

I use my KA mixer to cut in the butter, and that takes less than a minute, so butter crusts aren't all that time-consuming for me. I weigh the butter and water, cut the butter up into cubes, chill both of them for a while, then throw the butter in the mixer, holding back about 25% of the flour until after the butter has been cut in and before adding the water.

I use a 5" or 6" ring with some plastic wrap in it to weigh out the amount of dough for each pie crust; that keeps the counter cleaner, all I have to do is fold over the plastic wrap. I use a coffee tamper to flatten the dough into a solid disk.

A trick I learned in a BBGA online class is to take some parchment and wrap it around the top of the bowl as a shield to keep the flour from spilling out before starting it, since I don't have a bowl shield for my mixer.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Hi Choco. Glad you are feeling better. People who don't bake don't realize how physical it is.

Thanks for the tips Mike. I did it exactly backwards. I mixed in the butter a third at a time. I'll try it the other way next time. Also, the bakeries I know all mix in the butter in their mixers, like you. And they mix A LOT. I have a bowl shield and it doesn't do much good. I wonder if I couldn't do a hybrid method of cutting it in some by hand and then finishing it in my KA to keep the flour contained. I stopped using water and started using buttermilk for my liqiuid. Before that I was using powdered. I've also used heavy cream too.

BA, for something like pie crust do you use a neutral oil or olive oil? Here, with all the keto followers, coconut and avocado are the big oils. Costco now has giant bottles of avocado oil here. I don't know if that is country-wide or not.

I think I'll blind bake today and then Violet and I can make the apple and pecan pies tomorrow.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--I started by using canola oil. When I tried using all olive oil, the dough was not as easy to handle, although that was back when I used AP rather than pastry flour, so maybe I will try it again. I have used half olive oil with the canola for quiche or savory tarts. One reason I have incorporated avocado oil in my pie crust is that it, like olive oil, has 2 g saturated fat as opposed to 1 g in canola oil. I found that a bit more oil made for a better crust, with a bit of flakiness. The recipe uses 1 part buttermilk to 2 parts oil.

The original oil crust recipe came from the King Arthur 200th Anniversary Cookbook. I've adapted it over the years, by reducing the salt by 25% and adding some Bob's Red Mill milk powder. The pastry flours were my idea as well. The original recipe is designed to be pressed into the pie pan without rolling it out. However, with the two pastry flours, I find that I can roll it out and transfer it to the pie dish.

What I found took so long with how I made butter crusts is that once it was rolled out and put in the pan, it needed to be refrigerated, then I would put it in the freezer before blind baking. (I was following Cooks'' Illustrated directions.) The oil crust is put into the pie plate immediately after being mixed, rests for an hour, and then is ready to be blind baked.

I have my old recipe posted, but I should post my updated one. I will do so once I have tried some variation in the savory pie crust.

As for avocado oil, I also like it when I need to brown roasts or in bread recipes where I do not want the olive oil flavor. In whole grain breads, like the Grandma A's Bread, I can use olive oil and the whole grains cover the flavor. In the pumpkin braid I baked last week, I used avocado oil.

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