April

April I got to meet with twice.  April has been working at the COOP for two years and is the Pastry Supervisor.  That pretty much means that she's in charge of making sure everything runs smoothly.  Her favorite pie also happens to be Strawberry-Rubarb because it is the first fresh fruit pie after winter.  One of April's favorite things to do at the COOP is make tarts.  At the COOP they make a Lemon Meringue tart and the meringue actually doesn't shrink!  The trick is that they use a lemon-curd filling which has less liquid in it; and they use and italian meringue.  Between those two things and making sure that the meringue touches the crust they prevent shrinkage.  Next Lemon Meringue I make I'm going to have to look up those recipes.

With April I talked about the difficulties I had run into when I attempted to make their quiche crust.  April confirmed what I had already suspected, I had undermined the dough.  The tricky thing about that crust it turns out is that it actually NEEDS to be over mixed a bit to avoid cream cheese clumps.

Since I was still having a hard time rolling out dough April let me come to the COOP another time to actually see her rolling out some dough for a pie.  She used a tapered rolling pin (which I REALLY wish I had) and was just careful to always flour her surface.  They also use slightly smaller pie tins than I do.

When I asked April for any tips with baking or appearance she suggested that I try doing a lattice with fat strips and wide gaps (which I think really would look cool).  She also suggested that I try braiding my edges at some point in time... an idea that I am shocked never actually occurred to me.

Overall April was really helpful... All of the COOP Pastry Department was.  My only real problem with having them as mentors is that they knew about baking pastries... but they didn't focus on pies or anything.  At this point I'm fairly positive that I know a good bit more about what exactly is going on in a pie and I probably have almost as much experience baking them as they do...