Author: Nia Rouseberg
Time for reading: ~4
minutes
Last Updated:
August 08, 2022
Learn how to cook "6 common mistakes when preparing pie dough". Delicious recipe.
Preparing pie dough, like poached eggs and making biscuits, is a challenge that can be difficult for any culinary enthusiast. The perfect pie dough is buttery, but if you make a mistake in the process, you will get a greasy and moist mixture that you will not be able to form in the pie pan.
You can use a food processor or knead the dough by hand, use shortening instead of butter or vodka instead of water. There are several difficulties that very often create problems, no matter which products and method you choose. Fortunately, you can avoid them quite easily if you know the 6 common mistakes when preparing the perfect pie dough:
When preparing the dough for the pie, try to use cold products. Like biscuits, pie dough requires as little gluten as possible, which means that prolonged kneading and heat should be avoided.
The flour, butter or shortening must be cold, as well as water, vinegar, vodka or any liquid you use to make cold dough. If the day is hot, put all the products in the refrigerator before preparing the dough. If the butter starts to melt while you mix it with the flour, put it in the fridge or freezer until it cools and hardens. The melted butter will not give the dough the desired crispiness after baking, so do not use it.
When you cut butter to add to the flour and make dough by hand or with an appliance, the pieces you use should be the size of lentils or peas, even smaller than those used to make biscuit dough. . If the pieces are too large, the butter will melt and leave holes in the dough when you bake it. If they are too small, you will not get the delicate texture you expect.
We want the dough to be sticky, not wet. This is the key to the perfect pie dough. If it is too wet, it will be really very difficult to roll it. If you add a little more liquid, you can easily fix the consistency by adding a little more flour. But if you add too much liquid, you have to start re-preparing the dough, because adding too much flour will change the fat-flour ratio, which is necessary to get a nice crust.
You should allow the dough to cool and rest for at least 15 minutes to 30 minutes before rolling it out, ensuring that the dough is not too hot and will allow the liquid you have added to the flour and butter to spread more. evenly. You can freeze the dough and then let it thaw in the refrigerator for up to 3-4 days before using it. After 4 days, the dough will begin to oxidize and acquire an unattractive color, so use it beforehand.
Your dough is nice, chilled and rested, but when you roll it out you find that it sticks and is difficult to transfer to the pie pan without tearing it. There are several ways to reassure that this will not happen. First you need to make sure that the rolling pin, the dough and the surface on which you will roll the dough are sprinkled with plenty of flour. This will help the dough not stick. Remove excess flour from the shaped dough before placing it in the pie tin, otherwise it may burn during baking. If you add too much flour to the shaped pie dough, it will dry out and crack.
You can use an envelope to form a pie, which is very convenient for forming a perfect circle. Sprinkle with flour and put the dough inside, close the bag and roll out. Another option is to roll out the dough between two large round rubber trays. Without much staining and without special equipment you will have a wonderfully shaped pie dough.
When placing the dough in a pie pan of your choice, a common mistake is to roll out the dough in it and fold it along the edges of the pan. This creates a problem when baking pies. The better method is to shape the dough on a floured kitchen surface, then place it in the pie pan and press lightly along the edge to fold the edges along the walls of the pan.
Once this part is done, you can either bake the pie or prepare a delicious filling, shape the decoration on the pie and bake it. Be creative.