Baking and Pies October 2011

Today was in interesting day of pie baking. We baked several different kinds of pies, some with a Pate Brisee crust (Broken crust), others with a Pate Sucree crust (Sugar Crust) and others with a Cookie Crumb Crust. 

The fillings also varied, some were Baked Fruit Custard fillings and some were Stove Top Custard fillings.

Below is a Blue Berry Sour Cream Tart. 

We used a Pate Sucre crust that was formed and Blind Baked before at a 325 degree oven. Once the crust was crunchy enough, we covered it with the sour cream and fruit filling and baked it until it set. 

Here goes a basic recipe for Pate Sucre, that is easy and tastes simply delicious:

Yields about 10 9 inch pie shells. ( you can also divide this quantity by the amount of pie dough you want to make).

• 24 oz unsalted butter
• 19 oz powdered sugar
• 16 oz egg yolks (about 26 yolks)
• 56 oz AP flour

Cream the butter and the powdered sugar. Add the eggs, mix. Add the sifted flour little by little and mix until you get the right texture.

Refrigerate until hard. 

Pull out part of the dough and roll it out on a lightly floured surface, always moving it around while you roll so that it does not stick to the table. 

Fold it on a metal pie shell form pinching on the sides and freeze it for about 30 minutes so that it gets hard and holds it's shape. 

Dock it with a fork or pie docker and if you are using a small pie shell, cover it with another one and pre bake it until golden brown on the sides. If you are using a big pie shell pre bake it with parchment paper and baking beans.


Once you get the golden crust color, remove the beans and finish baking the center so that it becomes golden and crunchy.


Add the filling and bake it in a medium oven, 325 degrees.

Here goes a Cookie Crumb Crust Key Lime Pie:

For the Cookie Crumb Crust:

Gently crumble the cookie pieces to make it into a coarse meal. Add any kind of spices of your choice and melted butter. 

Press it firmly to a lightly greased pie shell and bake it briefly before filling it with your desired filling. 

One major mistake we did to this beautiful Key Lime Pie was add Evaporated Milk instead of Sweetened Condensed milk as the recipe called for. It tasted pretty bad...

Below is an Apple Tarte Tartin

The apples were caramelized on the stove top with it's crust over it and turned around.

Below is our Apple Pie, ready to eat.

Hint: When putting fruit filling on a pie crust, either cook the fruits and filling before and then add it to a baked pie crust or pre bake it very lightly, just until crunchy and then add the filling and finish baking.

You can also bake a raw filling on a raw crust. In this case, start with a very hot oven so that you activate the starch and get a jelly like texture on you filling. This way it won'd drain into the crust and help keep the crust crunchy.

The apples that we were about to cut for your apple pie are being held in acidulous water so that they do not get brown.

Here we are adding the flaky dough (Pate Brisee) top to our Cherry Pie, right after adding the cherry filling to the pre-baked Pate Brisee.

The filling for your Cherry Pie. 

Even though we diminished the amount of sugar, it was still to sweet.

When Pre baking a Bate Brisee, it is important to blind bake it at a high temperature oven, so that as the layered butter in the flour melts, releases steam from it's water particles and mechanically leavens the crust. 

This is what makes the crust flaky, tender and light.

Here goes a delicious recipe for Pate Brisee:

Yields 42 oz of dough, or 3 Pie Shells. you can proportionally diminish the quantity to fit your needs.

• 16 oz unsalted butter (chilled)
• 19 oz Pastry Flour (or AP flour)
• 4 floz Butter Milk or Water (chilled)
• 0.4 oz Water
• 0.5 oz Granulated Sugar
• 1 Tbsp Vanilla Extract

Cut butter into cubes, either with knife or pass it through a meat rack and lightly blend it with the flour, salt and sugar. 

Add the water, vanilla and mix until it forms a very crumbly dough. You should be able to see butter pieces in it.

Cover it in tight plastic wrap and refrigerate it until hard. 

Follow the same procedures as making Pate Sucree, except for the baking temperatures that were mentioned above.

Here are the baking beans we used to blind bake our Pate Brisee: a mix of Chick Peas, Black Beans and other kind of beans.

The raw Pate Brisee as it was just about to be  blind baked.

You can also make your Pate Brisee by hand, but I personally prefer using a blender with a paddle attachment.