February 20, 2004
View from Lodi, CA: Pondering The Piecrust Problem
By Joe Guzzardi
More of Joe’s food columns:
View From Lodi, CA: Hot Chocolate For Thanksgiving!
View From Lodi, CA: The Coming Fast Food Fight
View From Lodi, CA: Bon Appetit, Julia Child!
View From Lodi, CA: Fruitcakes—As Memorable As A Story
by Capote
View From Lodi, CA: Keylime Pie for Christmas!
View from Lodi, CA: What To Do About Bananas
This year I had no trouble deciding
what to give up for Lent.
I’m giving up piecrust—not eating
it, you understand, but baking it. Piecrust has been a
nuisance to me for over ten years. Eliminating it from
my baking routine is a joy and relief.
I realize that this is not a
traditional type of Lenten sacrifice. We’re supposed to
give up something pleasurable. Nevertheless, piecrust is
out effective immediately.
Over the last decade, I have
probably read more than 100 articles about how to bake
“perfect” piecrust. Most of them had irritating
titles like
“Piecrust 101” suggesting that if you can’t prepare
piecrust after reading the article, you are hopeless.
I’ve listened to a host of secret
tips like adding vinegar or using vegetable oil instead
of Crisco in the dough. The results were uniformly bad.
I own ten rolling pins. Among them
is an antique glass model where the cap unscrews and you
can place ice cubes in the pin. I purchased that one
during a period of mania that I now refer to as my
“Everything must be well-chilled” era.
In that same time frame, I bought a
marble board to roll my dough out on. The objective was
to put the board in the freezer for maximum chill. I
couldn’t fit a stick of butter into my freezer let alone
an 18” x 24” slab of marble. That’s how obsessed I was
to get good piecrust.
How sick I grew of watching the
various Food Network bakers throw water, flour and fat
together and roll out a perfect circle. But their
effortless pie shells always inspired me to try once
again. And invariably, the same results: a finished
product that had some---but not much---resemblance to
piecrust.
The struggle to produce the perfect
crust wore me out. Whether I was adjusting the basics
like how many tablespoons of water to add or
experimenting with the complex like gluten development,
hydration and overworked dough, I got the same pathetic
end product.
Even a recent candid admission by
Cook’s Illustrated editor Christopher Kimball
that it took him twenty years to master piecrust, I was
not persuaded to try yet again. Why waste another ten
years in futile pursuit of flaky and tender pastry
dough?
Abandoning piecrust has been a
tentative journey.
First, I’ll confess that I am not a
big fan of fruit pie. Occasionally, I’ll eat a slice at
breakfast. But for the most part, the traditional fruit
pie consists of an over-baked top crust and a soggy,
inedible bottom crust. In between lies a goopy mess of
steamed fruit. I’ll take my dessert pleasures in other
forms. For instance, my favorite chocolate cream pie has
a wonderful Oreo cookie crust that is fool proof.
Still, tradition dies hard. So when
Thanksgiving and Christmas roll around, the guests
expect apple pie. After my initial decision to give up
on piecrust, I went to the galette, the so-called free
form or rustic tart loved by the French.
The galette’s anything-goes concept
encouraged me. No matter what shape I ended up with, if
criticized I could always say, “Well, it’s meant to be
free form, don’t you know?”
But then, perfectly pleated
galettes began to appear on food magazine covers. They
were masterpieces. I could not help but to try to
imitate them in their geometric perfection.
And needless to say, my feeble
efforts dimmed in comparison. As the galette gradually
grew in popularity, it became more and more obvious mine
were a little too “rustic.”
But now I have liberated myself
from the shackles of piecrust.
And for those who insist on apple pie---the great
American tradition---I’ll be happy to bake it. But
my version will be the no-crust one below. Trust me;
you’ll never miss the crust.
