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From the Brick Spoon

by Euriol of Lothian

I used to find making a pie crust a very frustrating experience. Since I was 10 I could nearly cook anything I found in a cookbook, but I couldn't make a pie crust to save my soul. No matter how I tried, they never made it from the board to the pie pan, and that was a good attempt. Otherwise it would fall apart as I was attempting to roll it out, or it wouldn’t roll out. I gave up by the time I was 15, I thought it would just be easier to buy one at the store and be done with the trouble.

About 7 years ago, I finally saw someone make a pie crust. I had never been shown how to make one before. What I discovered was that my technique was all wrong. I made some bad assumptions, such as stirring is so much easier than cutting. What difference would it make anyway? I finally learned how important these differences are.

You might ask yourself, “What is the difference between stirring and cutting the ingredients together?” The simple answer is you stir with a spoon, and cut with a knife. Or in the case of making a pie crust. usually two knives, almost in a scissors like fashion (I personally use a pastry cutter, which is a D-shaped utensil, with the handle as the back of the D, and several (about 5) dull blades on the curve of the D).

With stirring, you push the ingredients together causing them to bind to each other. With cutting, you make your sticky ingredient into smaIler and smaller bits, and coating each bit with the dry ingredients. I personally like to get my bits down to the size of small gravel, no larger than rock salt. When you have sufficiently cut the ingredients, then you use your hands with usually a small quantity of water, and pat the bits into a ball to be rolled out, (usually after letting the pastry sitting for several minutes).

The main difference between stirring and cutting flour in a pastry, is that stirring can cause the gluten in the flour to activate and produce a rubbery texture. This texture I enjoy in breads and pasta. The flour you see in the store labeled “Better for Breads" is a high gluten flour. You can even buy gluten to add to all-purpose flour when you are using it to make breads. Kneading dough for bread is even better for activating the gluten in flour than stirring.

Cutting minimizes the activation of the gluten. The flour does not have the tendency to bind together, which in turn provides the flaky pie crust.

Nowadays I hardly give a thought to making a pie crust. But the lesson I learned was that understanding how ingredients react under different treatments is very important.

Pie crust recipe

Original Recipe taken from A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerve. (of the sixieenth century) (page 19) Edited by Catherine Frances Frere, found in A Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Cookbooks compiled by Duke Cariadoc of the Bow and Duchessa Diana Alena:

To Make Pyes .... yf you wyll have paest royall, take butter and yolkes of egges and so tempre the flowre to make the paeste.

Translation:

If you will have paste royal, take butter and yolks of eggs and so temper the flour to make the paste.

Interpretation:

Cut butter and egg yolks into flour until crumbly, add water and pat the mixture together until it forms a ball of dough. Let the dough rest, covered, for 10-15 minutes. Roll out dough then place into pie pan.

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