Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Top tips from a Professional Baker on fruit pies

Top tips from a Professional Baker on fruit pies

FOOD 52  https://food52.com/blog/17321-a-professional-baker-s-tips-for-baking-pies-smarter-not-harder  

1) Make your own Pie Dough Mix ahead of time up to months in the freezer. Icy ingredients create an extra flaky crust

2) Stock up on the dough itself. Make the dough ahead of time and freeze up to two months.

3) Crimp and store your homemade crusts in disposable tins

4) Rustic Crostata style: no tin, fill a rolled out circle of crust dough and pinch and ruffle edges inward to form a crust.

5) Make streusel ahead of time.

6) Basic fruit Pie formula: 5 cups of fruit to 1/2 C sugar to 1/4 C cornstarch to 1 big pinch of salt. Play with the sugar part especially if your fruit is tart

7) Low Maintenance fruit: Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries. Sturdy fruits like pears and apples can be roasted or sautéed or poached to intensify flavor or change the texture.

8) Chess pie or custard based pie: you can prepare the filling up to five days in advance and store in the fridge. Par bake crust up to one day ahead. When ready to bake, whisk well and pour into crust and bake until center jiggles.

9) Anytime something seems off with the dough, stick it in the fridge and come back in 30 minutes. Let the dough relax and hydrate in the fridge.

10) Sheet pans are just as important as pie tins. Fruit pies on the bottom rack first (to encourage bottom crust to brown) then move to top rack toward the very end to encourage the streusel to crisp.

11) Know what done looks like. Crust color at edge and sides should be golden brown and not at all raw. For fruit pies, look for thick slow bubbles on top. If bubbling over, it’s gone too far. For chess pies, look for slight puff of the custard and a lazy shimmy in the center when shaken. If it’s puffing dramatically, it’s gone too far.

12) Cooling time is critical. Fruit pies need a lot of time to cool, ideally 3-4 hours. Chess pies take a couple of hours. If it’s warm to the touch, don’t cut into it!


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