Let's Bake A Pie

One of the most talked about events on the Weekly Delicious calendar, Night of 1,000 Pies, will be upon us in only a few days! For my part, I had, until last night, never before made a from-scratch pie in my life. After the tuna hot dish that I made for last semester's, Night of 1,000 Casseroles, I didn't want to be one of the people who will show up to next Tuesday's event offering only money for supplies rather than a finished product. As a disclaimer, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH THOSE PEOPLE. We welcome them with open arms full of pie. I saw this however as a chance to learn a new skill and so decided last night to start looking up online pie recipes and make my first attempt so that I wouldn't end up with only hours to go next week and no idea what I'm doing!

For novices such as myself, I've decided to post here the easy pie-crust recipe which was sent to me by my wonderful friend Michelle. Hopefully this will sway even one person who had not intended to bring something of their own to our little get-together to give it their best shot.

Simple and Deliciously Flaky Pie Crust Recipe

--Ingredients
- 1&1/4 cups of all-purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon of salt
- 1/2 cup of butter (half a stick)
- 1/4 cup of chilled water

--Directions
- In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles course crumbles. Stir in water, a tablespoon at a time, until mixture forms a ball. Chill the ball in plastic wrap in the refrigerator while you prepare the innards of your pie.

- Using a rolling pin, or kneading if one is not available, roll dough out to fit over a 9'' pie plate. Place crust in pie plate and press evenly into the bottom and sides of the plate. Cut off overhanging edges.

...and it's that easy! Now that you have the crust of your pie ready, you can use it for nearly any type of filling that you desire. I myself made a tasty and simple egg custard pie (recipe can be found here: Grandma's Egg Custard Pie).

...but what you make is up to you! For some suggestions, here is a recipe for blackberry pie and one for apple pie which also tells you how to give your pie a really neat lattice top.

Before I finish, here is a list of tips I gathered during my crust-forming experience.

• When they tell you to "cut in the butter," they really mean it. Try freezing the stick of butter and then using the finest side of your cheese grater to create a "butter powder" which will be much easier to fold into your flour.
• I found that after adding in all of the water called for in the recipe, my mixture was still to dry to stick together and form a ball. What I did was to measure out another 4th of a cup (the smallest measurement that my cup would count) of water and then add half of that, discarding the other half. I then kneaded the mixture into the ball I wanted, making sure to fold the inside of the ball out many times, soaking up all of the extra water.
• Not wanting to have my dough tear as I was pressing it into the plate, I accidentally made the crust a bit too thick and thus the sides slightly lower than I wanted. The pie still came out fine, but just a heads up that if you want a thinner crust, you will have to make sure that you work it into the pan thoroughly.
• When you are rolling the ball of dough into a flat "circle, " you want to make sure that EVERYTHING has some flour on it so that your dough will stick to nothing but itself. You want flour on your hands, your rolling pin and the surface you are rolling it on. THIS IS IMPORTANT.

Hope that helps. If I think of anything that I missed, I'll edit it in later. Happy baking!