Pie....Again

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re lard

I have to agree lard makes the best crusts and a lot of things better.  But- lard is getting harder to find, and around here you get basically 2 choices, Armor or an off brand that I don't recall the name of.  I use it once a year for some holiday baking that just does not work with any other shortening.

 

I think the key to a good pie crust is to practice, practice, and then practice more.  Unfortunately in today's world that mean you will be working out much more to get all the "practice" off your belly.  If i have the time and the inclination I use Kelly's recipe, but it's so much easier to just use Pillsbury crusts, they are flaky ever time...
 
You Big Flake

I ate rhubarb pie at a friend's house recently and commented on the great crust which was flaky. Turns out it was Kroger brand pre rolled crusts from QFC. I wouldn't be embarrassed to claim them as my own.
 
So Many Pre-Made Crusts

Of quality can often be had that it is sometimes hard to justify time, effort and cost of making pie crust from scratch.

One usually watches for sales of frozen crusts at local supermarkets and stock up. This way should the mood strike and or a sudden need for a quick desert (or one doesn't wish to bother with the food processor and rolling pin), all one has to do is fill and bake. Will often do this around Thanksgiving when the demand for sweet potato pies is greater than free time allows.

Oh yes, the other good thing about pre-made cursts is not having to bother about getting the pie plate/pan back. You have no idea how many in-family fights and or broken friendships occur over a pie plate gone missing. This is especially true of the older Pyrex and Ecko metal versions. My Ecko cake, pie and cookie sheets do *NOT* leave my kitchen/house period.
 
One Recommends " The Complete Book of Pastry"

By Bernard Clayton ,Jr.

Mine was stashed into my hope chest ages ago (a Doubleday book club purchase, along with "Joy of Cooking"), and hasn't let me down yet.

A good basic to experienced book that takes you through the how,why and so froth of making good pastries and pies. Love his whole wheat pie crust, custard pies and quiche recipes.
 
Pillsbury crust

Everytime I have used them they always sink to the bottom of the pan while baking. I have even tried to put another light tin pan over it until it sets some but it always seems to fall... i have tried putting it back in the fridge to make it very cold before putting in the oven to having it room temp... anyone have any idea why? If I fill the pie with filling it bakes ok but not blind baking....
 
The crust sinking has happened to me a few times too.  I find it happens when the crust is older, I tend to tuck them in the basement fridge and forget them, they really should be in the freezer- I have not had that issue with fresh ones - that I can recall.

 

I too would like the whole whet crust recipe as I'm trying to do more natural foods.
 
I watched Kelly make pie crust for two pies here Mother's Day weekend and it's amazing, it really does take longer to study the pictures and read the instructions than it does for him to start and get it in the pie dish. I really wanted to learn this skill while he was here and I'm glad to have this thread as a study aid now! The process is very fast, I remember my grandmother doing it, just as simple and fast and she knew just how to roll it perfect every time. Practice is right, now I want pie!
 
Whole Wheat

In making pie crust you must use whole wheat pastry flour.  The finer grind allows the dryness of the wheat to autolyze (absorb moisture).  Regular whole wheat flour ends up a conglomoration of fat and granules.  Costco is selling a great unbleached whole wheat all purpose flour in two 10 pound bags bundled.  Flour has tripled in price this past year and at Associated Grocers cash and carry sugar is often cheaper than flour.  Soy based products have quintupled and should be expected to go even higher.  Bacon is hitting $8.00 a pound so I would surmise lard will be more expensive as well.  It chills my blood to watch the weekly jump in prices.  I bought a turkey recently to Barbeque at Peter request.  It was $52.00, $2.70 a pound.  I am filling the freezer with preservable produce that is cheap at road side stands through out the Columbia Basin and Yakima county.  I will continue to shop sales to stock the freezer and plan menus accordingly.
 
Grocery prices

There is proof that people are getting stronger as the years pass by. A hundred years ago, it could take an adult more than one trip to carry in $5 of groceries. Now many 3 year old kids can carry in $5 of groceries with one trip!
 
All about lard...

I remember getting into making pie crusts with lard back in the 1970's.

Another shopper, a middle aged black lady, and I spoke about it when we were shopping for shortening in the "Co-Op" dairy aisle. The one comment she made was that she liked using lard for pastry because "it gives it that old timey taste"...

Back then Crisco was made with tons of trans fat (partially hydrogenated vegetable oil). I have avoided Crisco for that reason for the past 10 years or so. A few months ago I perused a newer version of the product, and I saw that it says it contains zero trans fat, and instead uses more naturally saturated fats like palm oil instead. These are probably better for you than partially hydrogenated fats, but I think even healthier would probably be real butter or even lard.

Question for Kelly: You mentioned that modern butters are made with sweet cream and therefore are less flavorful than earlier butters. What were those earlier butters made from, and how can one locate some? I seem to agree that the butter I use today (mainly to flavor corn on the cob or popcorn) doesn't seem to have as much flavor as I remember from years back. I thought it was just me...
 
I gave up on Crisco in theory years ago because of the trans fat issue. (I say "theory" because I wasn't actually using it ever then. But it was a product I had used in the past without thinking twice.) At that point, I decided that if I ever baked a pie crust again, it would either be one based off cooking oil, or butter.

Even with reformulation, I'm not sure I'd embrace Crisco now if it's palm oil based. I've heard rumblings that palm oil is a bad thing environmentally. It's not an issue I've studied enough to come to a conclusion--but the rumblings are enough to make me concerned.

I feel more comfortable with butter these days than I do with oddly engineered replacement fats.

Link to Wikipedia article on environmental issues of palm oil:

Loading…

en.wikipedia.org
 
The best butter I've tried--not that I've tried all butters, or even all locally available butters--has been Organic Valley. They seem to have more variety than just "butter" or (at best) "salted butter" vs "unsalted butter."

Of course, it's possible that something would be better, like butter made years back. However, this is what I can get easily now.

It's more expensive than a house brand, but it does go on sale. Particularly around holiday time. Last Christmas, I think I saw really low prices on it.
 
Real lard from a good butcher is wonderful for pastry and frying. It looks nothing like the solid white commercially produced product from the supermarket. I recall my mother telling how her own mother rendered her own lard from the "leaf lard" she obtained from her butcher. Fresh leaf lard is transluscent and isn't completely solid. A good ethnic butcher should be able to sell you some. There is a local Italian salumeria that will sell it to me a few times per year. Also, I am not sure, but I thought you could also get from the website for "Flying Pig Farms" - the thing I don't recall is if you can get it already rendered or if you have to render it yourself.

There is no equal for frying or piecrusts. And it adds a subtle yet unidentifiable savory flavor to foods.
 
Lard

My Grandparents put it up in 3 gallon buckets, when they killed hogs they rendered the lard in an iron wash pot outside over a fire,..When you go out and pick up a chicken off the ground, kill and clean it , then put it in a iron pan full of hot lard, now you talk about real fried chicken, it is nothing like this old drug filled fowl you get today...as for the un healthy part, I figure if its not full of fat sugar or cholesterol, it sure cant taste worth anything!..Oh yeah, if you wonder why some lard is good and some not..First, if you kill a hog in heat, the lard wont be fit to eat, also if you dont kill it in the correct sign of the moon, it will be awful, as will your meat, ever wonder why some bacon frys pretty, and some curls up and looks awful...you guessed it, wrong sign! I believe in the almanac, I will NEVER go to the dentist without checking it!!
 
Pertwang

My mother and her mother left cream to stand on the counter until it clabbered or began to thicken and have a little twang.  It was then churned into butter, washed, salted and stored in the fridge.  If the cream was left too long it began to spoil and taste very strong.  If it didn't temper long enough the flavor was bland.  Clover affected the taste making more grassy than when the cows were eating hay.  If the butter wasn't washed and buttermilk remained in the mix it would develope an off staste in a hurry.  The best butters I tasted recently have all been Australian and those have been on Cathay airlines.  There are boutique butters, organic butters and triple cream butter that can have more flavor but they are hit and miss by brand.

Almost all butters churned commercially in the US are made from sweet cream or fresh cream having no bacterial influence in flavor.
 
Thanks, Kelly.

I did a little googling after I posted, and today there appear to be two main types of butter: "sweet cream", which is made from pasteurized fresh cream, and "cultured", which similar to what your mom made, is made from cream that has been allowed to ferment a bit before being churned into butter.

Interestingly, the USA and England produce mostly sweet cream, bland butter. Europe tends to make more cultured butter.

And of course there are all sorts of boutique butters with various flavors, but I would classify those as falling under the broad "cultured butter" category.
 

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