How to Blind Bake a Pie Crust Without Any of the Nonsense
Last week we talked about fruit fillings and how to keep a pie from turning into soup. Several of you came back with the other half of the problem.
The filling was fine. The bottom crust was raw.
Pale, soft, a little gummy, sitting under a perfectly good filling like it gave up partway through. Here is the thing about that. The fix is easy. It has always been easy. The reason you think it is hard is that almost everyone teaches it wrong.
You have probably read that you need ceramic pie weights, or a bag of dried beans, or rice. That you have to chill the shell until it is frozen solid. That you should poke it full of holes with a fork. That you need to brush it with egg to seal it.
You need none of that. Not one piece of it.
First, two different jobs
Blind baking means baking the shell all the way through, empty, before anything goes into it. When it comes out, it is finished. Nothing you put in it afterward is going to bake again.
Par baking means baking it partway, empty, then filling it and putting it back in to finish together.
People use those words like they mean the same thing. They do not, and the pie you are making decides which one you need.
Blind bake all the way when the filling never sees the oven:
Chocolate, banana, and coconut cream
Chocolate mousse and any other mousse pie
Lemon meringue, where the curd sets on the stove
Fresh strawberry pie, the one from last week with sliced berries suspended in gel
Anything that sets in the refrigerator
Par bake when the filling goes in wet and raw:
Pumpkin
Custard and buttermilk
Pecan
Quiche
Those fillings are basically liquid going into the tin. A raw crust under a bowl of liquid soaks before it bakes, and by the time the custard sets in the middle, the bottom is a wet sheet of dough.
A lot of pies need neither. A double crust apple gets no prebake at all. The fruit releases its moisture slowly, the top crust vents the steam, and the whole thing bakes long and hot enough that the bottom sets on its own. If a recipe tells you to blind bake an apple pie, it is solving a problem you do not have.
The method
Here is how we actually do it.
Roll your dough and line the tin. Ease it down into the corners, do not stretch it to fit.
Finish the edge now. Crimp it however you like, or just trim it clean. Do this before it goes in the oven, not after.
Put a second tin on top, nested down into the first.
Flip the whole thing over. Upside down.
Set it on a sheet pan, and put a second sheet pan on top.
Bake at 375 to 425 for 15 to 25 minutes. That is a guide, not a rule. You are baking to a look, and we will get to what the look is.
That is the entire technique.
Why it works
Think about what actually goes wrong when a crust slumps. The oven heats, the fat in the dough melts, and for a few minutes that dough is soft with nothing holding it up. Gravity pulls it down the sides of the tin and puddles it in the bottom. That is your shrinking, your slumping, your short sides.
Turn the tin upside down and gravity works for you instead of against you. The dough is pressed against the tin, not falling away from it. The moment the fat melts is the moment the dough is held most firmly in place. By the time it sets, it has held its shape without a single weight, and without you having to freeze anything first.
You do not need cold dough, because you are no longer fighting the melt. You are using it.
If you bake in glass or ceramic
This only works with a lightweight metal tin. Glass and ceramic are too heavy and too slow.
So use a metal tin anyway. Bake the shell exactly as above, then slip it out of the tin and set it into your glass or ceramic dish.
Nobody has ever noticed. Nobody ever will.
How to tell when it is done
Pull the whole stack out carefully and flick the top tin off with your thumb. If it comes away clean, you are at least par baked.
Then look at it. That is the whole test.
Wet and shiny means par baked. That is what you want under a pumpkin or a custard or a quiche. It has a second bake coming.
Golden brown, with no shine and no wet look anywhere, means fully blind baked. That is your cream pie shell, your mousse shell, and it is done.
Not there yet, put it back. There is no magic number.
What you are not doing, and why
No pie weights. They are a distraction. The upside down tin does the job better than beans ever did, and you do not have to own anything extra or keep a jar of scorched rice in the cupboard.
No chilling. You are not fighting the fat anymore.
No docking. Why would you poke holes in the bottom of a crust you are about to pour filling into? Steam is not your problem here, the second tin is holding everything flat. Holes are just holes, and liquid finds them.
No egg wash. People teach it as a seal. Skip it. A properly baked shell does not need one, and the second you brush egg on a crust you have made that pie off limits to anybody eating vegan. Fresh strawberry pie should be for everyone.
Two tins, two sheet pans, an oven. That is the whole list.
The point
Blind baking got a reputation for being fussy because the standard method is fussy. Freeze it, line it, weight it, half bake it, unweight it, finish it, seal it. Seven steps and a shopping list.
Roll it, crimp it, flip it, bake it. Four steps and things already in your kitchen.
Crust is where the craft in a pie lives, and it is not hard. It has just been badly explained.
Easy as Pie is Sunday October 18 at the bakery, and the name is not a figure of speech.
You will make a dough that does not tear. Not because you got good at handling it, but because the dough is right. It mixes right, it rolls right, it bakes right, and it tastes like it should. We go back to when pie really was easy as pie, before somebody decided it needed to be complicated.
Ten seats, all skill levels, no experience needed. The calendar is at thelakehousebakery.com/calendar.
Next week, butter. Specifically the European stuff, why it costs more, and whether it is worth it in your kitchen. The answer is more interesting than yes or no.
—Chef Keegan and The Lakehouse Bakery Team
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