[Sca-cooks] A small feast (long)

[David Friedman]

Cynata wrote:

>You said you made the pie crusts in advance and froze them. Do you have a
>recipe, and more importantly, some pointers on making good pie crust? Up
>until now I have relied on pre-made crusts, but Pillsbury just recently
>changed their packaging on their refrigerated crusts, and it seems like they
>have also changed their formula and the size of the piece of dough as well.
>At any rate, I haven't had good luck with the new crusts. And my local
>grocery is no longer carrying the Mrs. Smith's (dairy-free) frozen shells.
>So I have to learn to make my own. I would need to use either vegetable
>shortening or soy margarine instead of butter.

For recipes with no indication of what the pie crust should be, I use 
a standard modern flaky pie crust made with partly whole wheat flour 
and butter, although it can be done with margarine. I have no idea 
whether or not this is right--I know of no pie crust recipes before 
the 16th century, and the ones then include both "short paste" and 
pie crusts without fat.

For two 9" crusts, mix 2/3 c whole wheat flour and 1 1/3 c white 
flour, cut a quarter pound of butter into the flour until it is in 
very small lumps (I generally use a food processor for this; I have 
done it with two knives cutting X-wise against each other, but not 
for feast quantities), then add about 6 tablespoons of water a 
spoonful or two at a time and mix very carefully with a fork until it 
starts to hang together, working it as little as possible. I roll 
them out between two sheets of waxed paper into a circle the diameter 
of the waxed paper, remove one sheet of waxed paper and loosen the 
other before inverting the crust into a pie pan (it being a lot 
easier to peel waxed paper off the pie crust when it is lying flat 
than after it is in the pie pan). Put into a gallon zip-lock bag, 
squeeze the air out and seal, and you can have a stack of these 
sitting in your freezer for when you need them. I remember one 
earlier occasion for a larger feast when we had a real assembly line 
going in my kitchen and dining room making 20 or more pie crusts for 
the event a few weeks away. It is a way of getting a labor-intensive 
job out of the way when you have the leisure, without, as far as I 
can tell, compromising quality.

Elizabeth/Betty Cook