Finally
getting my dream kitchen followed by a year of lockdown and almost another year
of anxiety about going out has made me a competent home cook. I rarely cooked while
I was teaching, as my job demanded about 60 hours a week. After I retired, I
cooked a bit more, but I was very frustrated by the poor design of my kitchen.
In February of 2020, we began a kitchen remodel. Everyone knows what happened
in March.
So
for the last 20 months I have spent plenty of time in the kitchen. And this is
the time of year I bake pies. Lots of pies. My grandmother, Mam-ma, always made
pie crusts from scratch. My go-to was refrigerated pre-made pie crust. However,
I wanted to eschew the preservatives and plastic packaging, but mainly I wanted
to make a pie crust as good as Mam-ma’s.
So
as I began to making pie crusts using Flaky Pastry I from ‘Good Housekeeping
Cookbook,’ 1955 ed. (which I inherited from Mam-ma and mom). It calls for
all-purpose flour and then a choice of fat, either shortening, butter,
margarine, or salad oil.
I
don’t use shortening because it is so unhealthy (too much trans-fat), and I
don’t use margarine because it doesn’t hold together in baked goods, so I used
lard. Lard has 20% less saturated fat than butter, and is higher in mono-saturated
fat and oleic acid, which are both good for the heart.
My
pie crusts baked with lard always earned me praise at the big family dinners.
However, we do have a few vegetarians and quasi-vegetarians in the family who
will not eat lard. So I switched to butter and the result was a delicious pie
crust and equal amounts of praise for my cooking.
And
then I ate a prepared quiche from the local grocery store. The crust was so
tender—much tenderer than mine. I did some research and learned that pastry
flour, which has less protein than all-purpose flour, makes a tenderer crust.
Pastry flour is hard to find except in gourmet stores. However, you can make
your own from equal parts all-purpose flour and cake flour (which you can find
locally). Cake flour is even lower in protein than pastry flour.
So
I set out to discover which flour and which type of fat makes the most
delicious pie crust. I made a batch of each: all-purpose flour and butter,
pastry flour and butter, pastry flour and vegetable oil, cake flour and butter,
and all-purpose flour and lard.
I
abandoned the batch made with vegetable oil. It was impossible to work
with—very sticky and fragile. It was difficult to roll, and it fell apart when
I tried to lift it into the pie pan. The combination of all-purpose flour and
lard was definitely the easiest to work with. It made a silky smooth dough that
rolled and lifted easily.
First
I rolled and baked a cookie-sized disk from each batch so I could evaluate them
on their own merits. Then I blind baked (i.e. without a filling) crusts for
cream pies, and finally I baked a two-crust fruit pie from each batch.
Among
the disks, the all-purpose flour/butter combination puffed beautifully and was
the flakiest of the four. The pastry flour and butter disk was not as flaky,
but it was crisper. The disk made with the cake flour and butter was the second
flakiest, but it did not brown as nicely as the others. The taste among these
three was indistinguishable.
The
disk made from all-purpose flour and lard was not flaky at all and too crumbly.
Moreover, it smelled a bit “piggy,” especially before baking, but afterward
also.
The
cream pie made with all-purpose flour and butter was by far the prettiest.
There was no breaking when cut, and it was the flakiest. This was also true of
the fruit pie made with this combination of flour and fat. However, the crust
of the fruit pie was a bit too toothsome, perhaps because of the sugar and
cornstarch in the filling, which sticks to the crust and may make it a bit
tough. Both of these pie crusts browned beautifully.
The
pies made with pastry flour and butter were good, but not as flaky as the one
with the all-purpose flour. However, they were much tenderer. There was very
little difference between these and the ones made with cake flour.
The
pie crusts made with lard were problematic. They fell apart when cut, and the
top crust of the fruit pie even cracked during baking. The crusts made with
lard were definitely the tenderest, and they were quite tasty. The “piggy”
smell, I guess, was drowned out by the delicious pie-filling smell. In fact,
they were so tender and delicate, they were a bit powdery.
So, if you’re looking for a pie crust that is light, flaky, and holds up well to baking and cutting, definitely use all-purpose flour and butter, especially for a cream pie. However, if you are baking a more substantial pie, like pecan or fruit, you might want to substitute cake flour for some of the all-purpose flour for a tenderer crust.
