Pinot & Pie is back! The food, the wine, the friends, the parties, and all the other great things it means.
While I came up with the name Pinot & Pie quite a while back and then finally posted a couple of articles, I had to take a break for family, work and you know—the rest of life. Thanks to all of you who kept asking about when I would be posting more articles and recipes. It made me feel so good to know you enjoy seeing the posts!!! And thanks to all of you who followed my prior website FoodieOasis.com and are now following PinotandPie.com. (There is a link on the menu bar to the old site for those of you who still want access to those recipes.)
Now it is finally time to get back to posting the fun things I have been working on, along with the great photos and videos my amazing husband (Jeff in case you don’t know) shot.
The hardest question was what to post first. What would it be??? While this blog is dedicated to enjoying great food and beverages, not just wine and pie, it seemed like this post had to be about some form of PIE, right? Right! In fact, it has been exciting to watch the resurgence of popularity of PIE in all its forms across the food world. So, grab a glass of your favorite wine and join me on my journey with Pinot & Pie. We are starting with the beginning—pie crust!
While I won’t give you a hard time for buying pre-made pie crusts, it is really easy to make your own with four simple ingredients: flour, butter, salt, and ice cold water.
Start by placing the flour, butter, and salt in a food processor. Pulse the food processor until the mixture has a course texture. Then add a little less than 1/2 a cup of ice cold water to the food processor while it is running. Keep adding water 1 tablespoon at a time until the dough starts to stick together. As you can see from the video, you will have dough for 2 pie crusts ready in less than 2 minutes.
Take the dough out of the food processor and form it into two disks. Wrap each disk in plastic wrap and refrigerate the disks for at least 30 minutes.
TIP: If your pie dough is a little stickier than you intended, don’t worry about it. Just be sure to completely chill the dough and use lots of flour when you roll out the crust to keep it from sticking. Then next time you make the dough, use a little less water. For reference, you don’t really want the dough any stickier than what is shown in the video.
Letting the dough chill allows the gluten to relax. The pie crust will be easier to roll out and won’t shrink as much when you bake it. After 30 minutes in the refrigerator, remove the plastic wrap and place the disk of dough onto a floured surface, such as parchment paper.
Sprinkle flour on the top of the disk and rub flour onto a rolling pin.
Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough until it is about 1 inch wider than your upside down pie pan. To test, turn the pie pan upside down on top of the dough and check that you have an extra 1 / 2 inch of dough showing all the way around the pie pan.
Using the rolling pin, roll part of the pie crust around it.
Then lift the dough and place it across the pie pan.
Now you are ready to trim the extra crust off. If you want a fancier look you can crimp the edges with a fork or pinch the edge between your fingers to create a fluted edge. (Watch for an upcoming video.)
If you are baking your pie with the filling, it is time to add the filling. If you need a pre-baked pie crust, then you will need to do what is called blind baking the crust. We will leave blind baking for another day though!
TIP: If you only need one pie crust, you can freeze the other one. When you are ready to use it, let it thaw at room temperature for about 45-60 minutes until it is just soft enough to roll out.
- 2 1 / 2 cups flour
- 3 / 4 cup unsalted butter*, cut into small pieces
- 3 / 4 tsp. salt
- 1 / 2 cup to 3 /4 cup water, ice cold
- Place the flour, salt, and butter in a food processor.
- Pulse until a coarse mixture is formed.
- With the food processor running, add a little less than 1 / 2 cup of the ice cold water. Continue adding 1 Tbsp. of water at a time until the mixture starts to come together. Do not over mix.
- Remove the dough and place it onto a piece of parchment paper and form into two round disks.
- Wrap each disk in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
- Remove the cold dough from the refrigerator and let it warm up just enough to be able to roll it out to form the pie crust.
- Roll out the crust with a rolling pin until it is approximately 1 / 8 inch thick.
- Using the rolling pin to transfer the crust to a pie pan.
- Fill with your favorite filling!
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