If you believe in the holiday season, it is upon us. This means a lot of people are trying to bake even if they've never done it before. My advice: if you don't know how to bake, just buy the damn pie.
Don't try to learn at the last minute with all those festivities on the line. Wait until the holidays are safely behind us. If you've never made pie crust before and want to try those really cute pie-art tricks that show up on social media, just buy ready-made pie dough-- the kind that you unroll and drape into the pie pan for yourself. Then you can skip the frustrating part and get right to the fun. (And don't forget to buy premade pie shells to actually put the pies in!)
This brings us to my great-grandmother's recipes. Apparently she made a lot of pies because she covered an entire page with newspaper tutorials. I wonder if this means that she really knew how to make a good pie, or if she kept hopefully trying different newspaper lessons.
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| In case you missed it, I put my great-grandmother's entire recipe binder on this page. Go have a look if you're curious! |
Before we get out our rolling pins, let's get an eyeful of her handwriting on the top of the page It looks like a perfect specimen from a Palmer Method lesson book. Maybe she was showing off in her own private notes, just in case she let a friend copy out a recipe.
Because I didn't have this page in my hand several years ago, I learned how to make pie crust from Delia Smith's tutorial (which is really good. She shows every single little detail.). But today, we're going to try and follow these old clippings.
Any little housewife may turn out delicious, flaky pastry if she will but follow the directions carefully.
I know this article was printed for everyone in the greater Chicago area, but I'm nevertheless amused at the image of someone calling my great-grandmother a "little housewife." Based on photographs, she stood over her husband and had a stare that could drill the truth right out of you. Even her handwriting makes my friends flinch in fear.
First of all, just let us study for a minute just what pastry is.
It is a mixture of flour, shortening and water. Each grain of flour is thoroughly coated with shortening and then mixed to a dough with water. Do I hear you say "Well, I know that"? Surely you do. But do you know the real knack of putting it together? For here is the real rub. The minute you knead or squeeze pastry, that is the moment you make it tough.
I usually get my bare hands right into the mixing bowl, and I never thought my pies came out too tough. But who knows, maybe I've been doing it wrong for so long that I don't know I'm wrong anymore.
The Real Secret
I love that they called it a secret. Really makes me excited to learn what's coming.
Sift
Two cupfuls of flour.
One-half teaspoonful of salt.
Two teaspoons baking powder
together twice, and then cut or rub into it ten level tablespoonfuls of shortening.
Does baking powder really make a difference here? Mrs. George O Thurn used baking powder in her pie crusts, and I think this article is about from around the same time. Obviously the baking powder will fizz and put out gas as it bakes. But I don't know if pie dough will hold the bubbles or if the gas merely wafts into the oven. And it's hard to find answers online these days because every search gets you into a morass of AI slop.
I wonder baking powder was a short-lived attempt to make pie crust seem more modern and domestic-science approved. After all, we are adding a spoonful of twentieth-century chemistry to our pie instead of baking like it's still 1875.
Speaking of ingredients, I'm going to assume that "shortening" means any solid fat. (It took a surprisingly long time for the word "shortening" to mean "the white stuff in a Crisco can.") So, I used butter.
If you cut it in, use your griddle cake turner and chop it in rather coarse.
Cut the shortening in coarsely, you say? As we learned when we made several pounds of pie crust for a British-style picnic, leaving the fat in small chunks makes a flakier pie. The fat melts in the oven and leave little empty pockets throughout the dough, which helps separate it into lots of crisp layers. I kept cutting at our mixture until the butter pieces stopped getting smaller, at which point I figured it was "rather coarse" as directed.
On a practical note, I like that the writer has us using a spatula. If you're looking to the newspaper for pie guidance, you probably don't own a pastry blender.
Now mix to a dough with one-half cupful of ice-cold water...
I never bother with ice-cold water for pie crusts. Honestly, I typically hold the bowl directly under the kitchen faucet. But we're here to learn, so I obediently put a glass of water in the coldest part of the fridge beforehand.
Now mix to a dough with one-half cupful of ice-cold water, using the cake turner to mix the water in, just keeping on in the chopping and the turning back until the mixture is formed into a ball of dough. Do not knead or pat with the hand. You can not hurt this dough if you will just mix it as a man does with mixing mortar with a hoe.
Well our writer lost me at that last sentence. I've never watched someone mix mortar with a hoe. Did the newspaper editors assume that if you lived in the greater Chicago area, you probably walked past enough construction sites for this to mean something?
If we glance across the notebook page to the other pasted article, we are helpfully warned not to dump all the water in at once. Instead, we should gradually add it until the dough looks right.
Incidentally, this other article has a lot of other handy tips that the big one omits, like measuring your shortening by the water-displacement method* so you don't have to scrape it out of the cup. But back to our featured presentation:
Keep working it back and forth, chopping it each time until mixed. This amount will make the tops and bottoms of two pies.
I wasn't making two double-crusted pies, so I cut this in half. I figured I would make one dessert pie for the holidays, and use the rest for a spinach-bacon pie. At any rate, our dough was ready-- or at least it was as ready as it would ever be.
To roll the dough, divide it into four parts and then lift one piece on a slightly floured board and roll out the dough, keeping the rolling pin working to and from you and turning the dough as often as necessary to secure the size and shape desired.
Now, Delia Smith stresses the importance of letting your pie dough rest before you get out a rolling pin. She even shows a handful of freshly-mixed dough and compares it to pie dough that has relaxed for half an hour. The freshly-mixed dough is hard, crumbly, and almost rubbery. The rested dough is soft and pliant.
But today's article doesn't mention resting the dough at all. I don't know if that was too obvious to print (just like no one today tells you to discard the eggshells), or if our writer didn't think it necessary. Since anyone reading this when it was printed didn't have access to Delia Smith videos, I decided to pretend I had never head of resting dough and just slapped it right onto the board.
I ignored the part about "a slightly floured board" and snowed the countertop. I know I'm trying to see how much I can learn from this ancient cooking guide, but every time I don't use a lot of flour, the dough sticks to the board and to the rolling pin.
I think "don't use too much flour" is one of those little lies that just keeps getting handed around, like all those recipes that say "cook onions until caramelized, about five minutes." I saw someone complain about "don't use too much flour" in a discussion about cooking myths that refuse to die:
Our dough crumbled under the rolling pin and fell apart, just like the unrested dough in the Delia Smith video. I know column-inches were a precious resource, but they could have expended enough space to accommodate a sentence like "Cover and let it sit for about half an hour."
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| It looks a lot like the first time I made pie. |
The article seemed to anticipate how badly our dough would come out. Let's proceed to the next line:
Should the dough tear or not come to the desirable shape, just fold it into squares or oblongs and then roll again.
So, with the coarsely-cut butter chunks getting rolled and rerolled, we're almost making minute-puff paste.† I'm not sure if this on purpose, or if I am overanalyzing a newspaper article.
To my surprise, the dough actually handled better after folding it up and trying again. You'd almost think I had let it rest like Delia Smith would do. I was really happy with this guide until I held a pie pan over the dough to check the size.
Let's go back a few paragraphs: "This amount will make the tops and bottoms of two pies." This is confirmed a few lines later: "Divide it into four parts." Were pie pans a lot smaller back then?
I cross-checked the ingredient amounts with a few other recipes. If we move to the bottom-right of this very same page, we have another pie crust snippet that uses about half the ingredient amounts of our featured newspaper article, but makes only one pie crust. Setting aside my great-grandmother's notes, the spinach-bacon pie also uses about half the amounts in this article for one pie crust. Obviously, whoever wrote this made a mistake when claiming that I could get two double-crusted pies out of this.
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| I actually found and kept a typewriter when we were clearing out the apartment, but unfortunately it's not the one that made this. |
We had to cancel the second pie to save the first one. In order to avoid kneading or squeezing anything, I rolled out the other dough portion just like the first one. Then I folded it and stacked the two on top of each other. After all, the article says that if at first you don't succeed, fold up the dough and try again.
This article's ingredient amounts may be faulty, but the instructions worked extraordinarily well. I've never made a pie crust that I could fold up like a dishrag. And while pie dough generally gets tougher every time I reroll it, this got easier every time I tried again.
Place on the tin and then trim the edges.
I would have appreciated some more detail with that sentence. It is really tricky to get pie dough off the countertop and into a pie pan without ripping it. Our writer left everyone in Chicago hanging at the critical moment.
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| Reminder: This was supposed to be enough dough for two crusts. |
While we're on those subject, all those kitchen hacks like "roll the pie dough in a gallon bag/plastic wrap/waxed paper, flip it into the pan, and peel off the plastic" never work as well as you think. Every time I've tried it, the crust always sticks and rips when you try to peel the plastic (or paper, or whatever). And if you try it between two sheets of waxed paper (or two sheets of anything else), the damn things slip and slide all over the place, inciting language that is unfit for educational television.
Proceed in the same manner with the top crust, and then, when ready to place on the pie, fold from corner to corner, making a bias fold...
I love the sudden intrusion of sewing terms.
fold from corner to corner, making a bias fold, and then cut quarter-inch gashes with a knife. Lift and cover the pie and then trim to shape.
I honestly never thought of slitting a pie crust before getting it onto the pie. It seems so obvious after someone else told me to. It was much easier than poking the top of an assembled pie with a knife, but you do have to fuss a bit more over getting the top crust properly centered.
Now, do not form the trimmings into a ball, but lay them one piece upon the other and roll as desired.
You can reroll pastry as often as desired by this method. Keep in mind that kneading or squeezing the pastry forms it into a sticky mass. This method will give you a delicious, flaky crust.
A lot of today's article is pie advice that I've seen in other places and always ignored, but this was new to me. Purely for educational purposes, I stacked the scraps instead of wadding them up as I usually do. Because I wanted to see how well this works without making yet another pie, I rerolled our offcuts into a paprika cracker. By that I mean I simply brushed the dough with butter, then sprinkled with salt and paprika.
This actually puffed up in the oven. What's more, it stayed puffy after it got cold.
I might have overbaked it a little bit. But if we look past my failure to check the oven, we can see that the dough is flaky and beautifully layered despite getting rerolled some three or four times.
You may spread two tablespoons of shortening and then fold and roll. Fold again and reroll, then use as desired.
Ah! So we are flirting with puff paste!
Sufficient pastry may be made at one time to last for two or three days. Just wrap the dough in wax paper so that it will not dry out.
Did people really used to crank out pies every single day like that? I know that's a staple of olde-timey movies and novels, but I always assumed it was more of a poetic license.
Various fillings may be used. Fresh or canned fruits, custards, mince meat, etc. If you use fresh fruits, place:
One-half cupful of sugar.
Three tablespoons of cornstarch
into a bowl and rub between the hands to thoroughly mix, and then use this by sprinkling over the fruit. This will prevent the juice from boiling out of the pie while it is cooking and it will form into a jelly when cold.
I really liked the idea of making a fruit pie with so little effort. And as it happened, we had some raspberries pushing their expiration date in the fridge. I sprinkled them with sugar and cornstarch, put them in a small pie pan, and baked it next to that night's casserole. After 40 minutes of baking, the pie looked resolutely unchanged.
I thought the sugar would dissolve as the berries popped, but our instructions had failed us. I stirred the pie and it promptly turned into a soupy mess. And we know that I didn't underbake it because the crust got dangerously close to burnt.
Upon further consideration, I decided that perhaps you're supposed to sprinkle sugar onto each layer of fruit, not just on top of everything. So, a few nights later, I decided to try again with some blueberries that had gone sad and squishy. Things came out better than they did with the raspberry pie, but not by much.
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| As you can see, we never turn on the whole oven for one tiny pie. |
It was clear that the sugar and fruit would never mix on their own, so I took out the half-baked pie and stirred it. Then I returned it to the oven to see what would happen. It took a preposterously long time to bake, but turned into a really good pie. It didn't come out of the pan without a fight,though.
You can better appreciate how nicely this baked if we look at what's left in the pan.
This article's sugar-sprinkling advice baffled me. Generally, when you try a recipe it actually works (though not always!). Then I realized that this is probably meant for fruit that is already cut up. The berries couldn't mingle with the sugar without bursting through their own skins.
So, to give the advice a fair shake, I cut up an apple that's been in the fridge a bit longer than necessary. Then, since these pans are too tiny to contain a whole apple, I rerolled the scraps and made an open-top pie. I pushed the dough off the edges to make it look a little like a cute drawstring bag (an idea I got from the Delia Smith video).
If you don't have a top crust, you should be a tiny bit more light-handed than I was when sprinkling the final handful of sugar on top of all the fruit. The last few grains didn't quite dissolve. But the cornstarch thickened the pie crust as it baked, just as promised. You can really see how well it worded if we cut the other little pie open.
These pies crackled when I cut them. They almost sounded like I was slicing baklava. Let's have another look at the open-top pie:
It almost looks like I made it out of croissant dough, doesn't it? And that pie is made from scraps that got piled together and rerolled more than a few times. When the newspaper says we can reroll dough "as often as desired," they meant it.
Let's resume reading and see what other wisdom awaits:
To use canned fruit, drain the fruit free from the liquid and then cut into thin slices.
Great advice! No one wants to try to spear canned peach wedges out of a pie. Moving on:
Measure the liquid and then add:
Four level tablespoonfuls of cornstarch,
Eight tablespoons of sugar
to each cupful. Dissolve the starch and sugar in the liquid and then bring to a boil.
That is a lot of sugar. Isn't most fruit canned in syrup? Did they even have fruit canned in juice back then? Anyway:
Cook for three minutes and then add the prepared fruit. Cool before adding the pastry.
Yes, cooling your pie filling is very important. We learned this by accident when we made Dick Emery's honey fruit pie. If you pour in your pie filling while it's still steaming hot, your pie crust will melt.
To prevent the lower crust from becoming soggy, just before putting in the filling brush it well with a good salad oil or shortening, taking care that each part is covered. This will give you a tender, flaky crust.
This is similar to buttering the bread for sandwiches if they're going to have to sit around a while (like on a party tray, or if you're packing lunch the night before). It waterproofs the bread enough to keep it dry at least overnight. I brushed the apple pies with cooking oil before loading them with fruit. And if we cut one open, it was perfectly crisp from top to bottom. If it looks a little wet, that's just some of the filling that followed the knife.
And because I used some strategic cooking spray, both apple pies fell right out of their pans. As they apparently say on Great British Bakeoff, we have no soggy bottoms!
But as I learned while riding this flaky-crust high, some pies do better with a flakeless crust. After some preliminary success, we put some lovely, flaky dough under a spinach-bacon pie. All the wet spinach on top of it prevented it from getting crisp- but it did get annoyingly hard anyway. (A soggy crust would have been better.) It also left a greasy mess in the pan.
Now that we have made an educational mistake, let's pick up where we left off:
Just before the pie is ready to put into the oven brush it with a wash of egg and milk, using
Yolk of one egg.
One-half cupful of milk.
Two tablespoonfuls of sugar.
Stir to dissolve the sugar and mix in the egg. Then wash the pie. This will keep a week in a cool place.
I'm going to suggest that you brush this on as thinly as possible. I washed the pie with a heavy hand, and within a minute or two I heard a tsst!... tsst!... tsst! coming from the oven. The wash was dripping off the pie and burning where it landed. I had to hastily snatch it out and get a pan under it.
Now that we have learned from the error of our ways, let's get back to the newspaper. After helping us put a pie together, today's lesson concludes with a temperature guide:
The correct temperature to bake a pie is 300 to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. This means a moderate oven. Too much heat will brown the crust before the filling inside has had the time to cook.
Yeah, I learned about too-hot ovens the hard way. Where was this article when I needed it? (Buried in a box in the closet. It was buried in a box in the closet. All this wisdom was right in the house the whole time.)
Custard pies—this includes those made of eggs, milk, lemon meringues, sweet potato and pumpkin— require a slow oven, 250 degrees Fahrenheit.
Oh for the days before AI stole the em dash from us.
I'm tempted to scoff at baking a pie at 250 degrees (that's about 120° for our Celsius friends). But a lot of my custard pies come out of the oven with very dark edges. I'm going to have to try this next time and see if it works, or if it is yet another case of malicious temperature typesetting.
At any rate, our two-crust apple pie came out so pretty you'd almost think I bought it.
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| I did not make puff paste. It did that anyway. |
Well, I know I learned a lot of things from this article. If we ignore the part where they said you can get four pie crusts out of the recipe, I'm glad I tried it. As a postscript, I did the cement-mixing and scrap-stacking method on another spinach-bacon pie (can you tell we make that one a lot?). We had enough dough to generously drape into the pan.
Every other time I've made this pie, I can barely get the crust to cover the pan-- and even then we have a lot of thin spots. I've never had extra offcuts with this recipe before. If you didn't see this pie when I first posted it, the crust usually comes out like this:
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| This is after using the last bowl-scrapings to patch all the holes. |
It must be this article's magic method. I didn't change anything else.
In closing, I don't think you can give this article to someone and leave them to it. This seems intended for people who know enough about pies to bungle them instead of staring helplessly at the rolling pin. (Also, I still think it would have been nice to get a few sentences of help in lifting the crust off the countertop.)
But I definitely feel like I've learned something. I haven't been this delighted since the first time I got a pie crust into the pan in one piece. Who knows, maybe someday I'll manage to get those cute crimped edges that everyone else can do.
*The water-displacement method is when you half-fill a measuring cup with water, then spoon in your shortening until it comes out right. For example, if you needed a quarter-cup of shortening, you would put ¾ cup of water into the cup, then drop in spoonfuls of shortening until it comes to the top. Then pour out the water through your fingers and let the shortening fall into your hand.
A lot of people may be thinking that it's so much easier to just weigh the shortening. But for whatever reason, Americans never really took to kitchen scales. Or at least, we stopped using them before the nineteenth century was out. ↪
†For those who've never heard of rough-puff or minute-puff paste, it's a shortcut version of puff paste. You make the dough for a pie crust. But instead of finely cutting the butter into the flour, you leave it in big, lazy chunks. After the dough is ready, you roll, fold, and reroll it a few times. The rolling pin flattens all those butter chunks, and folding/rerolling the dough stacks them into layers. Sometimes minute-puff gets puffier and flakier than puff paste made the "correct" way. ↪
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