Top Crust & Lattice Instructions: Crust 101

Now that you have your bottom crust set, added your filling, and put the top crust on, you have only a few steps left until it's ready to go into the oven.

1-Trim the overhang so that it is even on all sides. I like to use kitchen shears.

2-Fold the dough under both the top and the bottom crusts and back into the pie pan.

3-Evenly fold it all around so that a lip is created. If you have any parts that are thin or have cracks, you can fill them in with extra dough so that the lip is even all around.

4-Using your thumb, push the lip of the dough outwards and with the thumb and forefinger of your other hand, pinch the dough around your thumb. Continue to crimp around the edge of the pie.

5-Cut vents (Decorative vents should be done before putting the crust on, but for simple slits or holes you can use a knife).

6-Freeze the pie for about 15 minutes while your oven is preheating.

7-Brush with whatever topping the recipe calls for and put it in the oven.

How to Create a Lattice Crust:

Lattice crusts are a different beast, though with a little practice they're not actually that hard.

By the way, when I'm making a lattice crust, I like to make the dough for my top crust a little larger than I normally would, just in case I need extra dough.

1-Once the top crust is rolled out, use a pizza cutter to cut the dough into even strips (about 1/2 to 3/4 inch wide).

2-Fill your bottom pie shell with pie filling (if you haven't already).

3-Drape 4 to 7 parallel strips across your pie filling (space them depending upon how tight you want your lattice to be). When you choose which strip to lay across the dough, don't use all the longest ones first. Make sure you choose the appropriate length for where you are draping it (i.e. longest in the middle, shorter strips for the side).

4-Fold back every other strip to the half-way point and drape a long strip perpendicularly down the middle of the pie.

5-Unfurl the folded strips so that every other one is now covering the perpendicular strip.

6-Working from the middle out, one side at a time, fold the strips that are running under perpendicular strip back over strip. Drape another perpendicular strip parallel to the first strip

8-Fold the strips back down and continue this process until the weave has completely covered the pie.

8-Trim the over hang so that it is even (about 1 inch) and fold up into the pie (not under like you normally would on a pie crust. Fold edges over and crimp to secure.

Rolling Out Your Dough

So you finished that hour mark (or overnight time period) for chilling your dough?
Great! Now it's time to roll it out!

Before you pull your dough out of the fridge, you need to decide how you want to proceed. There are many methods for rolling out dough.

1-Floured surface: This is my personal favorite method because I feel like I can see what is going on with my dough. However, if it's not floured enough, the dough is likely to stick to the counter or to your rolling pin and it can be messy (I'll give a tutorial below).

2-Plastic wrap: you can see what's going on, it's "easier" to put the dough into the pie pan, which is always hard, but Plastic wrap is a little sticky and it folds and creases and that bugs me too much to put up with it. But basically, you stick some plastic wrap to your counter and place a sheet over your dough as well and start rolling out. No flour needed.

3-Waxed paper is probably the best of both worlds. It doesn't move around as much (especially if you put a little water on the counter before you put down  your waxed paper) and it doesn't fold AS MUCH, but you can't really see what you're doing, which bothers me. Again, the basic method includes a sheet of waxed paper on the counter as well as another one over the dough.

For both waxed paper and plastic wrap methods, make sure that you have a large enough sheet on the bottom and top to cover the whole surface of the dough when it's rolled out.

Like I said before, I prefer the floured surface method. I really haven't had many problems with it but it can be a bit tricky, so here's a basic tutorial for rolling it out.

Rolling Out the Dough:

1-Flour your dry, clean, counter with about 1/4 cup flour. Spread it around with your hands.

2-Flour both sides of your dough disc by unwrapping your dough and placing it in the middle of the flour. Flip the disc over and before setting it back on the flour, use the existing flour to cover the place where the dough just sat.

3-Lightly dust your rolling pin in flour.

4-Press down on your dough with the rolling pin and roll it back and forth a few times (only about three or four passes with the rolling pin). If the dough starts to crack when you push down in on it, let it soften for a minute or use your hands to slightly warm the edges. Whatever you do, be gentle and try not to let it crack.

5-When the dough is longer than it is wider (not by much since you are trying to keep it in a circle), pick up the dough and flip it over and also rotate it 90 degrees, so that the dough is now wider instead of taller. This will make it so you can continue to use your rolling pin to move away from you and towards you.

Again, before putting the dough down you want to swipe your hand across the counter to reapply flour to the counter where the dough was just sitting.

6-You should continue this motion (rolling a few times, picking up, turning over, rotating 90 degrees, and re-flouring the counter) until the dough feels too thin to pick up. This may happen after only three or four of these intervals.

7-At this point, the dough should be several inches across and should resemble a circle. Also, you may have some problems areas (i.e. not big enough for pie pan, cracks, thick/thin areas, lopsided), here are some ideas:

1. Not Wide Enough: Roll dough from the center out circling the dough to continue to enlarge it. 
2. Cracks: Lightly moisten the edge of the crack with water. Roll dough towards crack on both sides of the crack to build up dough in the crack area. Once the dough has come together, gently roll over the crack. This is really only a temporary solution and the dough should be handled delicately through the rest of this process.
3. Thick/Thin Areas: You can move dough around with your rolling pin by pressing down extra hard on the thick areas and rolling it towards the thin areas.
4. Lopsided: Sometimes you can't do much for a lopsided circle. This is something you need to be careful of in the beginning stages of rolling out the dough, however, if it is lopsided, but still large enough to fit in your pie pan with about a one-inch hangover all around, don't worry about it. If it won't you should gather your dough back into a ball, place it back in the refrigerator for 30 minutes and attempt to roll it out again later.

8-Once it is wide enough (you can gauge this by holding your pan over the rolled out dough and looking to see how many inches are visible around the edges) , get ready to transfer the dough.

Transferring the Dough:

Again, there are many ways to do this: Rolling the dough over the rolling pin, picking it up and flipping it over (especially in the case of using wax paper or some other covering for rolling out the dough.

The method that has worked the best for me is to fold the dough into fourths and the put the tip of the fourth in the middle of your pie pan and unfold.

  

Follow this same process for the bottom crust and the top crust.

Come back tomorrow for more about crusts and a little lattice tutorial.

Basic Pie Crust

Often I don't go into as much depth as I could when giving crust directions and I'm starting to feel guilty about it. It's not that I don't want to, but many of the recipes that I've used don't detailed explanations about how to make crusts, which is why I thought it was time for an overall tutorial.

Also, you should know that I'm not an expert, but I've learned a couple of tricks in the past few months and so I hope that this will give you the added confidence to try a pie crust (if you haven't) or give a few extra tips to those who make a lot of pies. 

Oh, also, please note that I don't make my crusts in the food processor so I don't have any tutorials for you on how to do that. I'm not against that method (though I hear that you can quickly over-process your dough), but my food processor simply isn't big enough to make crusts so I've never tried it.

My most important tips for crust preparation:

1-Keep it cold: I mean, cold cold. Keep everything cold, refrigerate the fat (butter, shortening, or lard), refrigerate or freeze the flour, make sure the water is ice cold, try to avoid making a crust in a hot room (and if you do, slip it back into the freezer every few minutes to cool it off). The reason for keeping everything cold is that these little bits of solid fat won't melt until they hit the heat at the rest of the crust has already started to form. This is what makes a pie crust flaky and the key to a delicious flavor.

2-Be quick and efficient: This is partially to keep the crust cool, however, what I really mean by this is don't over work the dough. You're not making bread here and you don't want to release the glutton (because it will get tough) or allow the fats to melt (because it won't be flaky), so be quick. 

3-Use all-purpose flour: of course there are recipes where you might use wheat flour or cornmeal or a something else for a little extra pizazz, but for your basic recipe, you should just use all-purpose flour. Pastry flour is fine, but a second choice to all-purpose. Bread flour will give you a cracker-like crust, and cake flour is too delicate.

Pie Baking Tools:

1-A Large Mixing Bowl: obvious, I know. Make your crust in it. Use it to combine your fillings, etc. Mine is pretty average, but I like that it's ceramic (because it keeps cooler longer than plastic) and and it doesn't have extremely steep walls so I can press my pastry cutter up against it (not to mention that it doesn't bend when I cut my butter against it).

2-A Pastry Cutter: I love my pastry cutter. It makes life so much easier. However, my mother-in-law only uses a fork, I used a fork for the first 10 pies I made (not this year, last year), and I used a fork a few weeks ago. I'm basically just saying that you need something to cut your fats into your flour. Use whatever works for you. I have this pastry cutter and it's great. I'm certain it's not the best one out there, but it's perfect for my needs.

3-A Pie Pan: while you can use all types of pans for your pie (from aluminum to ceramic) I've found that the best, and my favorite, are the good old fashioned 9-inch Pyrex pans. First of all they make a very evenly browned bottom crust, you can see what's going on with your bottom crust, and (while this doesn't factor into the taste) they are so cheap, they're practically giving them away. One thing to note is that a 9-inch pie pan has about a 5-cup capacity and although it doesn't sound like it's much bigger, a 9 1/2-inch pan has about a 7-cup capacity so make note of what size you have when planning out your pies.

The basic crust-making process:

1-Take the cold fat you're using for the crust (butter, shortening, or anything else) and cut it into small squares on a plate. Put the plate into the freezer--I leave it uncovered--to re-chill it while preparing the other ingredients.

2-Combine flour, sugar, salt, and any other spice or dry ingredient in your mixing bowl. Stir it with a whisk to get rid of any lumps that may be there. Put mixing bowl and dry ingredients in the freezer (I also leave this uncovered).

3-Measure the liquid (milk, water, cream, etc) in a cup and stick it in the freezer. If you are using water as your liquid, put a few ice cubes in the cup before you add your water just for that added chill.

4-Don't think I'm crazy about telling you to freeze everything. Just submit.

5-Take you flour and fat out of the freezer and add the fat to your flour mixture (you might have to scrap your plate to get it all off).

6-Lightly stir so the fat is coated with flour mixture.

7-Start cutting the fat into the flour mixture. Cut the butter into the flour. To "cut" the flour means to use your pastry cutter to bear down onto the fat/flour mixture. It's kind of like making mashed potatoes. I like to work from the center out, bearing down first in the middle of the bowl and then working out as if I'm using my cutter to create a sunburst-like decoration.

7-Continue to cut until it looks like coarse meal or lentils or small peas. You want little balls of butter. If it looks like sand mixed with pebbles, you're not done yet.  If it's starting to become a paste, you've gone too far.

8-Once it looks like coarse meal, I usually put the flour mixture in the freezer for a few one or two more minutes.

9-Add the liquid. First of all, there are probably 2 schools of thought on this subject. One adds all the liquid at once (to avoid over-working the dough), and the other adds the liquid a teaspoon at a time. I personally add all the liquid upfront, because it often seems like I need to add an extra tablespoon at the end anyway, and I think this prevents over-working the dough.

10-Once you've added all the liquid, stir or flick the dough around the bowl so that all of your little balls get a bit of moisture on them. Once they are wet, use your hands to form them into a ball. This will takes some squeezing and pressing down on it with your palms. If it ever seems like the dough is getting too warm put it back in the freezer for a few minutes.

11-Also if you've been kneading and just can't get everything to stick, wet your hands or sprinkle another tablespoon (or less) of cold water on the dough. It's okay to use more liquid if it's not sticking, but just do little by little because you don't want your dough to be sticky.

12-Once it is formed into one ball, split into two (if doing a double crust) and form each side into balls. Often I make one side smaller than the other and use the larger ball for the bottom crust. Flatten the balls with the palms of you hand so they are like discs and will be easier to roll out. Wrap the discs in plastic wrap and put in the refrigerator for the allotted time (usually an hour).

Come back tomorrow when we talk about rolling it out and baking it.