No Pie-Baking Wizard
I am not a pie-baking wizard. Last week, however, I pretended to be a pie-baking wizard as I busily instructed 14 nutrition students on the finer points of the art. "Starting right in with the healthful food," Joel commented when he heard what I was doing. This, after the tempura feast our family had on Sunday night--another candidate for the food Hall of Shame because everything was batter-dipped and deep-fried. (Oh so delicious, though, and the vegetables inside all that fried batter were healthful, and the oil was monounsaturated, and the batter was light, and we ate it with plenty of rice, and . . . . I rest my case.)
Back to pie baking. Each student is to prepare a cream pie from scratch to be consumed at home, with a brief report on the project from the student's mother. In addition, on Wednesday each student is to bring a homemade double crust fruit pie for the class to evaluate and sample. Followup comments from students: "We never make double-crust fruit pies at home." "My mom hates to make a top crust." " Can we put crumbs on the top?" The assignment stands, unimpressed comments notwithstanding.
I explained: "Top crusts represent an extra skill-layer. What better time to learn skills like this than in a class where you're supposed to learn cooking skills?" (Can you hear the overweening patience coming through?)
Last Monday, in order to get from start to finish in one class period, and, in order to break up the process into several steps, I resorted to using commercially-made crusts and home-canned apricot pie filling. I basically demonstrated how to put a pie together--fitting the crust into the pan without stretching it, putting the right amount of filling in the crust-lined pie pan, marking out the size of the pie on the rolled-out crust, and disguising the steam vents in the crust in an artful design. Then I moved the crust to the pie, after wetting the edges to make the bottom and top crust stick together. A firm pressing together, slicing off the excess crust with a knife, crimping the edge, and then brushing on an egg wash and scattering a light sprinkling of sugar finished it off. "Do we get to taste it?" someone asked.
"No," I answered. "We'll taste pies another day. These ingredients all come from my supply at home and I want my family to eat it. " The students got to smell it and see it later in the day after it was baked. It turned out OK, and I brought it home intact.
On Monday I also showed them my system for baking crusts for cream pies. This turned out very differently than I expected. Before, when I've done this the easy way at home, the crusts have shrunk right down into a sulking position far into the well of the pie pan. Filling such crusts with a decent amount of cream pie filling means piling it higher than the top rim of the crust--not cool--really pathetic, in fact.
At school the crust I did the easy way, expecting to show the shrinking phenomenon, turned out nearly perfect, with very little shrinkage in evidence. Whoa. Then I did the more elaborate maneuvers, putting the crust on the outside of an upended pan and putting another equal-sized pan on top of it. This almost worked, except that the crust didn't quite settle into the lower pan after I took the baked pie-pan sandwich out of the oven and inverted it. Part of it stayed stuck to the top pan. All in all it was not a convincing performance.
On Wednesday I planned to cover making crusts from scratch, and making fruit and cream pie fillings. I really wanted to give the students some actual practice in class, but the logistics overwhelmed me--too little time and too little room and stove space at school--and I ended up baking four pie crusts at home and completely finishing lemon and sour cream raisin pies, both with meringue toppings--one the simple old-fashioned kind and the other the cornstarch-augmented kind. I also cooked chocolate pie filling and a vanilla-flavored pudding for peanut butter pie.
Then I gathered all the ingredients and tools for making a cherry pie from scratch in class. I also took toppings for the chocolate and peanut butter pie and ingredients for making the peanut butter crumbs. All these things required three large farmer's-market-vegetable-vendor-sized totes to transport.
In class I showed everyone the lemon and sour cream raisin pies and pointed out the differences in how I had made the meringue and in the results. The sour cream raisin pie had jewel-like beads of liquid on the surface of the meringue. My students and I thought it looked nice, but I remembered that my high school home ec teacher had told us this was not a desirable result of making meringue. I wasn't overly apologetic though; at this stage of the process I was quite willing to take beauty over perfection.
For the crust-making demonstration in class, I used pastry flour--half white and half whole-wheat. This flour combination made a very soft crust (or was it because the shortening wasn't cold enough?) and was pretty tricky to keep from falling apart when I transferred it from the counter to the pan. I also cooked the filling during class, prevailing on students to take turns stirring it, etc. while I proceeded with making the crust. The pie went into the oven after class was over. This was acceptable since I had already showed them the "putting together" step in the previous class. I realized too late that I had forgotten the sugar-sprinkle part of the final preparation. No matter, I decided, and did not confess the omission.
Before the students left class I told them my sampling plan. I would cut each pie into sixteen pieces. Each student was entitled to one slice of each pie, but no more than one slice of any pie. Each student had to taste at least one bite of each pie. The pies would be served at the end of the school day. After I got home I realized that for those who ate 1/16 of each pie, the total came to 5/16 of a pie. That's more than 1/4 of a pie. No wonder some of the girls took only one bite of each pie. And no wonder that other non-nutrition class students wandered into the kitchen and felt free to help themselves to what was left--thanks to the one-bite tasters in the class. I had purposely not invited them because I didn't know if anything would be left for them.
Before I filled the last two crusts with cream pie fillings in class I showed the students some of my less-than-stellar results of the pie-baking activity at home. One of the crusts was badly burned (I threw it away after class.). It was baked in a blue granite pan which had gone into and come out of the oven at the same time as a glass pan. The glass pan crust was not burned. In fact, it looked a little anemic. I hope it made the point for my students that the kind of pan you bake in makes a difference in how long the baking takes.
I also pointed out that the anemic-looking crust had shrunken far more than the burned one. I think the most significant difference was in the ready-made crust brand. Pillsbury has good color and minimum shrinkage. The Aldi brand looks pale and shrinks unacceptably. Both of them came in a box with 2 tube-shaped rolls of crust in long plastic packages. I also like the Pillsbury crust flavor and texture better than the Aldi brand. I like homemade crusts best of all, but I don't apologize for taking shortcuts when the more time-consuming methods aren't workable.
I had other disasters at home--beyond the burned crust. Because I needed one more 9-inch Pyrex pie pan for the fruit pie to be assembled and baked in class, I attempted to move one baked crust from a glass pan to a metal pan. It came out in many pieces. I patched it together and showed it to my students, and went ahead and used it. At such times I tell myself that if the students learn from my mistakes they won't have to make them all themselves. (I think it had not cooled enough yet.) Also, I hope they gain courage to try new things by seeing that perfection is not the only possible satisfactory outcome of food preparation experiments. I didn't hear anyone complaining about the broken crust when they sampled the pies, and the cream pie fillings covered almost all the breaks in the crust.
Another crust had bubbled up on the bottom, creating a large air pocket between the crust layers, in spite of having been well-pricked all over. I showed them the pie-crust weights I had used for the next crust to prevent this problem.
On my to-do list after I got home from school on Friday was baking two pies to take to the Mennonite Manor benefit sale. I mixed up a batch of homemade crust, and nothing good came of it. It proved impossible to handle. I finally mashed one crust into the foil pans that had been provided, and tried to make a top crust. I got it rolled out, but it came up in many pieces when I tried to pick it up to transfer it to the pie. I was getting more frustrated by the minute when Hiromi came home with three boxes of ready-made Pillsbury crusts in his grocery bags. I made a swift decision to take yet another pie baking shortcut for the week and scraped out of the pan the bottom crust I had smashed into it. With the ready-made crusts, those pies went together in a hurry, and they came out of the oven looking great. I did have some trouble with transferring the hot pies to a carrier for the trip to Joel and Hilda's house after 9:00 in the evening, so they could take them to the sale early the next morning. The flexible pans "bent" the pies in ways that messed with the top crust, but, again--perseverance, not perfection.
After the pies were in the oven, I put that failed crust mixture into the refrigerator to give myself time to ponder the possible reasons for the spectacular failure. In the process I spied the measuring cup which contained the liquid ingredients I had prepared to be mixed with the crust--still waiting inside the fridge. I couldn't believe it. I had been trying to handle a crust that contained only dry ingredients and shortening--no liquid. I distinctly recalled telling my students that "all crusts must have three ingredients: flour, fat, and liquid. Other ingredients might vary and some are optional, but not those three. "
I think the shortening was partly at fault. Despite having been refrigerated all day, it still seemed very soft when I was cutting it into the flour. The fact that, without the liquid, it "looked" like ready-to-roll crust instead of a crumbly dry mixture tells me that something about this was abnormal. (Can you tell I'm trying to excuse my failure?)
I was comforted by the fact that this failure was a private one, until I wrote about it here, at least. But the memory of my high school home ec teacher's pie baking demonstration was the most comforting of all. After the pie she prepared was all ready to go into the oven, she carried it over to the sink to wipe off a bit of flour on the outside of the pan, and accidentally dropped the whole thing into a sink full of dishwater. All my little failures pale in comparison to this dramatic one.
Apparently it's not possible to be both a nutrition class teacher and a pie baking wizard. I guess there's still hope that one of the students might qualify. We'll find out on Wednesday.
Back to pie baking. Each student is to prepare a cream pie from scratch to be consumed at home, with a brief report on the project from the student's mother. In addition, on Wednesday each student is to bring a homemade double crust fruit pie for the class to evaluate and sample. Followup comments from students: "We never make double-crust fruit pies at home." "My mom hates to make a top crust." " Can we put crumbs on the top?" The assignment stands, unimpressed comments notwithstanding.
I explained: "Top crusts represent an extra skill-layer. What better time to learn skills like this than in a class where you're supposed to learn cooking skills?" (Can you hear the overweening patience coming through?)
Last Monday, in order to get from start to finish in one class period, and, in order to break up the process into several steps, I resorted to using commercially-made crusts and home-canned apricot pie filling. I basically demonstrated how to put a pie together--fitting the crust into the pan without stretching it, putting the right amount of filling in the crust-lined pie pan, marking out the size of the pie on the rolled-out crust, and disguising the steam vents in the crust in an artful design. Then I moved the crust to the pie, after wetting the edges to make the bottom and top crust stick together. A firm pressing together, slicing off the excess crust with a knife, crimping the edge, and then brushing on an egg wash and scattering a light sprinkling of sugar finished it off. "Do we get to taste it?" someone asked.
"No," I answered. "We'll taste pies another day. These ingredients all come from my supply at home and I want my family to eat it. " The students got to smell it and see it later in the day after it was baked. It turned out OK, and I brought it home intact.
On Monday I also showed them my system for baking crusts for cream pies. This turned out very differently than I expected. Before, when I've done this the easy way at home, the crusts have shrunk right down into a sulking position far into the well of the pie pan. Filling such crusts with a decent amount of cream pie filling means piling it higher than the top rim of the crust--not cool--really pathetic, in fact.
At school the crust I did the easy way, expecting to show the shrinking phenomenon, turned out nearly perfect, with very little shrinkage in evidence. Whoa. Then I did the more elaborate maneuvers, putting the crust on the outside of an upended pan and putting another equal-sized pan on top of it. This almost worked, except that the crust didn't quite settle into the lower pan after I took the baked pie-pan sandwich out of the oven and inverted it. Part of it stayed stuck to the top pan. All in all it was not a convincing performance.
On Wednesday I planned to cover making crusts from scratch, and making fruit and cream pie fillings. I really wanted to give the students some actual practice in class, but the logistics overwhelmed me--too little time and too little room and stove space at school--and I ended up baking four pie crusts at home and completely finishing lemon and sour cream raisin pies, both with meringue toppings--one the simple old-fashioned kind and the other the cornstarch-augmented kind. I also cooked chocolate pie filling and a vanilla-flavored pudding for peanut butter pie.
Then I gathered all the ingredients and tools for making a cherry pie from scratch in class. I also took toppings for the chocolate and peanut butter pie and ingredients for making the peanut butter crumbs. All these things required three large farmer's-market-vegetable-vendor-sized totes to transport.
In class I showed everyone the lemon and sour cream raisin pies and pointed out the differences in how I had made the meringue and in the results. The sour cream raisin pie had jewel-like beads of liquid on the surface of the meringue. My students and I thought it looked nice, but I remembered that my high school home ec teacher had told us this was not a desirable result of making meringue. I wasn't overly apologetic though; at this stage of the process I was quite willing to take beauty over perfection.
For the crust-making demonstration in class, I used pastry flour--half white and half whole-wheat. This flour combination made a very soft crust (or was it because the shortening wasn't cold enough?) and was pretty tricky to keep from falling apart when I transferred it from the counter to the pan. I also cooked the filling during class, prevailing on students to take turns stirring it, etc. while I proceeded with making the crust. The pie went into the oven after class was over. This was acceptable since I had already showed them the "putting together" step in the previous class. I realized too late that I had forgotten the sugar-sprinkle part of the final preparation. No matter, I decided, and did not confess the omission.
Before the students left class I told them my sampling plan. I would cut each pie into sixteen pieces. Each student was entitled to one slice of each pie, but no more than one slice of any pie. Each student had to taste at least one bite of each pie. The pies would be served at the end of the school day. After I got home I realized that for those who ate 1/16 of each pie, the total came to 5/16 of a pie. That's more than 1/4 of a pie. No wonder some of the girls took only one bite of each pie. And no wonder that other non-nutrition class students wandered into the kitchen and felt free to help themselves to what was left--thanks to the one-bite tasters in the class. I had purposely not invited them because I didn't know if anything would be left for them.
Before I filled the last two crusts with cream pie fillings in class I showed the students some of my less-than-stellar results of the pie-baking activity at home. One of the crusts was badly burned (I threw it away after class.). It was baked in a blue granite pan which had gone into and come out of the oven at the same time as a glass pan. The glass pan crust was not burned. In fact, it looked a little anemic. I hope it made the point for my students that the kind of pan you bake in makes a difference in how long the baking takes.
I also pointed out that the anemic-looking crust had shrunken far more than the burned one. I think the most significant difference was in the ready-made crust brand. Pillsbury has good color and minimum shrinkage. The Aldi brand looks pale and shrinks unacceptably. Both of them came in a box with 2 tube-shaped rolls of crust in long plastic packages. I also like the Pillsbury crust flavor and texture better than the Aldi brand. I like homemade crusts best of all, but I don't apologize for taking shortcuts when the more time-consuming methods aren't workable.
I had other disasters at home--beyond the burned crust. Because I needed one more 9-inch Pyrex pie pan for the fruit pie to be assembled and baked in class, I attempted to move one baked crust from a glass pan to a metal pan. It came out in many pieces. I patched it together and showed it to my students, and went ahead and used it. At such times I tell myself that if the students learn from my mistakes they won't have to make them all themselves. (I think it had not cooled enough yet.) Also, I hope they gain courage to try new things by seeing that perfection is not the only possible satisfactory outcome of food preparation experiments. I didn't hear anyone complaining about the broken crust when they sampled the pies, and the cream pie fillings covered almost all the breaks in the crust.
Another crust had bubbled up on the bottom, creating a large air pocket between the crust layers, in spite of having been well-pricked all over. I showed them the pie-crust weights I had used for the next crust to prevent this problem.
On my to-do list after I got home from school on Friday was baking two pies to take to the Mennonite Manor benefit sale. I mixed up a batch of homemade crust, and nothing good came of it. It proved impossible to handle. I finally mashed one crust into the foil pans that had been provided, and tried to make a top crust. I got it rolled out, but it came up in many pieces when I tried to pick it up to transfer it to the pie. I was getting more frustrated by the minute when Hiromi came home with three boxes of ready-made Pillsbury crusts in his grocery bags. I made a swift decision to take yet another pie baking shortcut for the week and scraped out of the pan the bottom crust I had smashed into it. With the ready-made crusts, those pies went together in a hurry, and they came out of the oven looking great. I did have some trouble with transferring the hot pies to a carrier for the trip to Joel and Hilda's house after 9:00 in the evening, so they could take them to the sale early the next morning. The flexible pans "bent" the pies in ways that messed with the top crust, but, again--perseverance, not perfection.
After the pies were in the oven, I put that failed crust mixture into the refrigerator to give myself time to ponder the possible reasons for the spectacular failure. In the process I spied the measuring cup which contained the liquid ingredients I had prepared to be mixed with the crust--still waiting inside the fridge. I couldn't believe it. I had been trying to handle a crust that contained only dry ingredients and shortening--no liquid. I distinctly recalled telling my students that "all crusts must have three ingredients: flour, fat, and liquid. Other ingredients might vary and some are optional, but not those three. "
I think the shortening was partly at fault. Despite having been refrigerated all day, it still seemed very soft when I was cutting it into the flour. The fact that, without the liquid, it "looked" like ready-to-roll crust instead of a crumbly dry mixture tells me that something about this was abnormal. (Can you tell I'm trying to excuse my failure?)
I was comforted by the fact that this failure was a private one, until I wrote about it here, at least. But the memory of my high school home ec teacher's pie baking demonstration was the most comforting of all. After the pie she prepared was all ready to go into the oven, she carried it over to the sink to wipe off a bit of flour on the outside of the pan, and accidentally dropped the whole thing into a sink full of dishwater. All my little failures pale in comparison to this dramatic one.
Apparently it's not possible to be both a nutrition class teacher and a pie baking wizard. I guess there's still hope that one of the students might qualify. We'll find out on Wednesday.
posted by Mrs. I at
5:44 PM
2 Comments:
This is hilarious!!! Despite me hating cooking and doing many things by trial and error, one thing I can do is make a pie crust. Weird, I know. One thing Mom always said was to use very hot water instead of cold and room temp lard/shortening. That totally goes against what all the "experts" say, but it works for a flaky crust every time. What a fun read!
By
Sherilyn, at 10/10/2010
I have resorted to the pre-made pie crusts, since they always turn out and there isn't such a big mess. I know it is a bit lazy and not as economical, but since pies aren't that healthy any way you make them, I figured it is a shortcut I can afford to take. I never did get that top crust perfected.
By
Dorcas Byler, at 10/12/2010
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