First Crust!

Tonight, I made my first official pie of the project - an Amish Milk Pie that you'll have to wait until Saturday to read about.

This also means that I made my first crust from scratch. Now maybe I've just absorbed too much technique from watching Food Network and PBS cooking shows over the decades, but....

(what's the big deal?)


Measuring Crisco was messy, but doable. Cold cubed butter? Chunk it up and stick in the freezer as the first step. A pastry blender made cutting the fat into the flour a cinch (although we pitched the blender after I was done - we've got another with a more comfortable handle). Even adding the water wasn't bad; I just stopped a little short of where I thought it should be and had a rather workable dough.

Rolling the crust out wasn't bad, either, save for the antique wooden rolling pin that squeaks like rusty bed springs. And my technique for the 1,001 methods crust-into-pan magic? Center the inverted pan over the rolled out dough (on a semi-rigid plastic cutting board) and flip the whole assembly like you would turn out a cake onto a plate. No problems yet!

The worst part of the whole thing was the tedious waiting. Rest the dough in the fridge. Chill the plated pie shell for 15 minutes. Total time from pulling the flour out of the cupboard to putting the pie in the oven: about an hour. Hopefully I'll get more efficient with practice. Or maybe I just need to make up a bunch of dough balls at once and freeze them until I need crust.

Maybe it's just beginner's luck, but pie crust is almost too easy to make...