[Sca-cooks] raised crusts

[Terry Decker]

>--- Terry Decker <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> Oops.  That should be between 48 and 60 ounces for
>> the flour, which will
>> raise the water to between 2 and 3 cups, if I'm
>> estimating correctly.
>
>Whew! I kinda thought that wasn't much water for that
>much flour, Bear, but I'm certainly NOT the baker you
>are ;-)
>
>Phlip

I'm a little foggy.  Work is sapping some of my mental capacity, so I'm
thinking pints for quarts.  Oey!

With sifted flour, you're talking 3 pounds.  2 cups or about 1 pound of
water you can produce a stiff dough.  If humidity is low or the flour is
very dry, you may need a little more liquor.  As a generalization, flour to
water, 1:1 will produce a very soft dough or a very stiff batter, 2:1 will
produce a moderately soft dough, 3:1 or higher will produce a stiff dough.

A modern commercial pie dough is usually, by weight, 3 units of flour to 2
units of fat to 1 unit of liquor with a little salt added.  In the case of a
single pie shell, you can make the 3-2-1 measure by volume because the
weight variances tend to fall within tolerances for small volumes.

May's recipe approximately reverses the quantities of fat and liquor.  If
you were preparing this cold, you might need 3 to 4 cups of water.  In this
case, the hot water will melt the butter, producing additional liquor from
the fat.  It also will change the texture of the dough from a flaky pie
crust to something closer to pasta dough.

For a free standing coffin, you will want to use less water to make the
dough stiff, but enough water to keep it being too dry and crumbling.  I
like to do this by hand because I can feel the difference.

Power mixers produce stiffer doughs than you normally produce by hand by
folding more flour into the mixture.  For a freestanding coffin, using a
KitchenAide might be the way to go.

Bear