Pumpkin Pie Au Natural Part 2

How to make the pie crust!

This recipe should give you 2 10-inch crust, plus a little more for cinnamon sugar cookies.

Mix 3 cups flour, 1 tsp kosher salt, and 1 tbsp sugar in a food processor and give it a quick mix. Add 12 tbsp cold, cubed, unsalted butter and 1/3 cup cold vegetable shortening. Pulse 8-12 times, until the butter breaks up into small pieces. Keep the processor running slowly and pour ice water into the bowl until the dough forms into a ball. You'll probably need 1/2 to 1 cup of ice water. Wrap the ball in some lightly floured plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. This ball of dough will actually last a long time in the freezer.

Now cut the ball in half and roll it out on a very floury board. Start from the center and roll outwards to make a circlish shape. Put the rolled out dough into a pie dish and cut the edges off. It's better to leave a little extra on the edges because they shrink when cooked. If you have trouble lifting the big sheet of dough, fold it in half, lift it onto the dish, and then unfold it to fit the dish. Repeat with the other half of the ball.


Now if you are smart and rich, you have a food processor or mixer. I have niether. So I mixed that dough the old fashioned way. And while I was endlessly mixing the really cold and hard butter, I was thinking, "Why does the butter have to be cold?! *!$&#@ Can't I just use soft butter so that I can finish mixing this sometime this century?! How did people make pie crust 200 years ago before they had refrigerators?? Seriously!!". So I found out.

I guess the goal is a flaky crust, so you are kind of deep fat frying the flour. When you are mixing the fat (butter) with the flour, you don't want to completely mix it, you just want to coat it. This is easier to do if the butter is cold and hard. People used to just cut in the butter and quickly mix it, but refrigerators and mixers have made this process faster and more efficient, so the butter doesn't have much time to melt and the chef doesn't get her hands dirty. You also don't want to work the dough too much because the molecules tend to stick better when you push them together, which makes the crust tough. Now doesn't that make things better? I am now at peace with my cold butter.

If you have extra crust, mold it into fun shapes, sprinkle a little cinnamon and sugar on them, and pop them in a 350 degree oven for 5-10 minutes. They make great Christmas cookies!



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