Goal 3

I've always believed that in order to properly create something you must first understand how it works.  So it just seemed like common sense that in order to understand how to improve my pie making skills I needed to understand what on earth was going on.  Hence, my search into the chemistry behind the pie crust.  Before researching this I had no idea how pie crusts worked. So you cut the butter into the flour until it's the size of peas... that's great and all but WHY? What would happen if you had them too big or too small? It's important to keep your pie dough cold... how come?! I now know the answers to those questions. Oh yes, I'm feeling very smart right now. Ready to learn? You'd better be because I'm in the mood to do some teaching.

The first thing to know is the ingredients of a pie crust. The recipe I use calls for flour, sugar, salt, butter, and water. Mixing the flour sugar and salt is easy. The tricky stuff (and the stuff that makes pie crusts nice and flaky) comes into play when the butter is added in. Really any kind of fat would work. The three main options people have are butter, shortening, and lard. Each has its own list of pros and cons... Butter gives it a better taste; but it's the hardest of the three to work with because it melts so easily.  Shortening is easier to work with; but you don't have a great of a taste and if you aren't careful you'll overwork your dough.  Lard is apparently the easiest to work with; but it's hard to find lard that's been cleansed enough that it won't give your crust a piggy taste.  Personally I just always use butter.  I just love the taste so much that the extra effort in working with butter is worth it.

Moving on... the chemistry behind pie crusts. So when you're adding the butter recipes always stress that the butter is supposed to be cut into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal with butter chunks the size of small peas. This is EXTREMELY important... and I now know why. When the butter is combined with the flour what is taking place is the flour is coating the butter. Then the water is added and the flour that is not in direct contact with the butter joins with the water and makes gluten. When the dough is rolled out the butter chunks form sheets that separate the gluten into layers. While baking, the liquid is baked out of the crust, and the butter. Where the butter was, air pockets are formed creating the flaky crust every pie baker dreams of.

When I said that it is EXTREMELY important that the butter to be cut in until the chunks are about the size of small peas, I seriously mean it's EXTREMELY important. If the butter is cut into the flour too well then there is not enough dry flour to join with the water and the crust turns into this crumbly sandy mess. If the butter is not cut in enough it takes extra water to take care of all that excess dry flour which makes more gluten than is needed which makes for a tough leathery crust. Bleh. So you see... butter cut until it's the size of small peas, that's the key.

Now to answer the other question I've always had... Why on earth do pie crusts always have to be kept so cold? Well this goes back to the whole deal with the butter only supposed to be cut into the flour to a certain degree... If the pie crust is warm then the butter just melts. Then the butter and flour combine completely and a crumbly, sandy, absolutely hopeless crust is all you are going to get. The dough MUST be kept chilled to prevent the butter from melting.

Pretty neat stuff, right? Well I thought it was. It's amazing how something as simple as a little bit of gluten and some air pockets can create that amazing flaky crust!  Now the other alteration on a pie crust recipe is a quiche recipe that has cream cheese in it instead of any water.  This recipe makes an EXTREMELY flaky crust, but why?  If you've been paying attention then you ought to be able to figure this bit out for yourself.  The liquid in the cream cheese does join with the flour and create gluten, but the cream cheese is also able to help the butter form even more air pockets!  The texture of the cream cheese makes it possible for the dough to hold together wile also being flakier than a normal flour butter water crust could.  It's pretty cool!

So there you have it... the secret to the pie crust.  Once you get a good look at it everything seems pretty simple.  It turns out though that people used to have it all backwards.  They thought that the butter covered the flour and prevented the water from getting in there to create gluten...  I don't really understood how they ever thought that because if you look closely you can actually SEE the flour coating the butter... but hey, I guess people just believe what they've been told.  Maybe everything I just learned is wrong too and one day someone will be rolling their eyes saying "I don't know how they ever believed that nonsense."  But I doubt that... This makes sense, so I'm fairly certain it's correct.  All in all, now that I understand what's going on with my pie crust hopefully I'll be better able to improve my methods!  Always remember, it's important to apply what you learn.