3-2-1, or everything you needed to know (and more) about pie crust

What I want to know about cooking is the how and why. I don't want to just follow a recipe in a book, I want to understand the fundamental elements that make a recipe work, and at the CIA, the light started to shine onto that knowledge. It all started with pie dough.

The CIA calls their pie dough 3-2-1 dough. If you remember those three numbers, you can make a decent pie crust nearly everytime. Here's what the numbers mean: one unit of water, two units of butter or shortening, and three units of flour, all measured by weight. This is the classic proportion for pie crust, and now that I know this, I'll never really need to look at a recipe again. The only issue you need to remember, however, is how much of one of those ingredients is sufficient to make sure that your final dough has enough mass to fill a pie pan. If you look at almost any single pie crust recipe, you'll see that most of them call for similar amounts of fat, either butter or shortening, which usually is one stick of butter. If you can remember that's what you need for one crust, and you remember the 3-2-1 formula, you'll always know how to make a pie crust that works everytime.

Using one stick of butter as our starting point, we just need to know how much that stick of butter typically weighs. A stick of butter equals 8 oz, so your water weight will be 4 oz, and the weight of the flour is 12 oz. No need to use a cup measure, just weigh out the right amount of flour and water proportionate to the fat, and you're good to go.

Now a few important things need to be understood to make a great pie dough. The classic American pie crust should be both flaky and tender. But what is it that makes them flaky and tender? It has everything to do with the fat of choice. Butter is at least 10% water, and can range up to 20%. What happens then when that butter is heated in the oven? The water content becomes steam. This trapped moisture bubbles up through the flour, and creates tiny air pockets all throughout the dough, which results in the flakiness everyone likes so much. But an all butter dough will not be as tender as one made with shortening. Butter brings the best flavor to the party, but if there is only butter, though it is flaky, it will also be a bit brittle and not as tender as is desirable. For tenderness, you need to use shortening.

Why is shortening called shortening anyway? We use the term without ever pausing to wonder why in the world it's called shortening in the first place. The root word really holds no significance to our understanding of the product in our day to day usage of the term. It's simply an abstract term that just happens to stand for the white, solid-at-room-temperature fat that comes in a can. In fact, shortening is the best term for Crisco and the like, because it's actual function is a shortening function. What does it shorten? Well, when water and flour come together to create a dough, gluten structures are formed in long chains. These long chains are desirable and necessary in bread making, since it is the long gluten strands that give architectural structure sufficient to create thick, chewy crusts, and breads that rise and stay in that risen shape. Since no one wants a tough, chewy pie crust, those long gluten strands are not desirable. Shortening actually shortens these strands, and is a natural barrier towards the formation of long gluten chains, thus helping provide a soft and tender crust. So what I learned at the CIA is that an all butter dough is tasty and flaky, but tough, while an all shortening pie crust is incredibly tender, with little flakiness, and no taste whatsoever. The solution? Marry the two. (Or use lard!)

Most recipes now call for a 1/2 and 1/2 mixture of butter and shortening, and that's what Jan M. has done forever. Her secret ingredient, which adds even more flavor to the crust, is to use butter flavored Crisco. She's a smart cookie.

Today, I'm trying the pie crust I learned how to make at the CIA. But since I'm not really sure how big a pan I'll be using, and since I still need practice at getting a perfectly sized pie crust rolled out, I upped the butter/shortening by two oz. I'd like some breathing room! Easy to adjust, since it's all by weight. And as I speak, the butter and shortening, flour, and food processor bowl are all sitting in the fridge or freezer cooling off. Using cold ingredients is the final (and vitally important) element needed in making perfect pie crusts.

Pie crusts should be made as cold as possible, and quickly, to help keep things cold. Speed is also important since it prevents overworking the dough. Working a pie dough too much is undesirable, since it will create the long gluten strands that we are so desperately trying to prevent. Conversely, when making bread, this is why bread is kneaded so long, to create the gluten strands that give bread it's structure. (I LOVE knowing this!) So speed is of the essence, but why the cold? It all comes back to the desire for flakiness. The butter needs to stay solid thoughout the entire process. If the butter begins to melt, it becomes too diffused to be useful in creating those pockets of flaky goodness we all love so much. So what good cooks do is to use very chilled butter. Some go even a step further and chill the bowl and utensils they'll be using as well. Since I have really hot hands, I do this, and even sometimes plunge my hands into ice cold water before working with pie dough. (Crazy I suppose, but I'm passionate!) This is also the reason that pie crust recipes always call for the water used to be ice cold water.

Mixing the crust is easy. I like to use the food processor, since it makes short shrift of the task (though you can very easily overwork the dough this way--it's best to process the dough in pulses.) Cut the butter and shortening into small pieces, and add it with the flour into the bowl of the food processor. Pulse until it reaches the right size. In nearly every cookbook you'll ever read, there are two universally used descriptions for what this "right" size is: coarse meal, or pea-sized. I go with pea-sized, since I know what that looks like. At this point, you add the water. At the CIA, they don't mess around with worrying about having too much or too little, they'll always just dump in all the water from the 3-2-1 proportion at one time. Most recipes in books, however, will say to add the water a few tablespoons at a time, until it's reaches a mystical consistency that's moist, but not wet, or they might say until it becomes "shaggy," while others will say until it just holds together when you squeeze it in your hand. I tend to use too little water, but I think dumping all the water in at once could be a recipe for disaster. This is where practice and experience comes into play. For this, I need to learn some more from mom!

At this point, the CIA says that it's best to let the dough rest overnight, or at least for a half hour. In working dough, it's inevitable that gluten strands are formed, even if we've been cautious to use ice cold ingredients. Gluten is like a rubber band: it stretches, and wants to return to its original shape. This can wreak havoc in the oven. If the dough hasn't been able to rest properly, then there is a strong chance that while baking, the dough will shrink on itself, thus pulling away from the pie pan. Not a good thing. Thankfully, gluten strands "relax" and lose their springiness if allowed to rest sufficiently, so this is the reason pie crust recipes suggest letting pie dough rest in the refrigerator. The CIA suggests allowing pie crusts to rest overnight. Resting overnight can cause some discoloration, or oxidation of the dough, however. This is why often you will find a little bit of vinegar called for in pie crust dough recipes. The vinegar protects the dough from oxidation in much the same way that lemon juice prevents apples from browning. Incidentally, the vinegar also encourages pie doughs to roll out more easily.

Once this is all set, roll out the dough and you're on your way to making a great pie. Then you just have to pick out a filling worthy of the effort you've taken to make the perfect crust.

For a famly gathering tomorrow, I'm making perhaps the easiest, and most decadent dessert imaginable: a chocolate ganache tart.

Here's the recipe:

Make the crust, and bake it at 350º until it's golden. (This is called blind baking, incidentally...blind because there is no filling. It's important that you have some sort of weight on the pie crust when you do this, however, since the steam in the crust will cause the crust to rise away from the bottom of the pan. Usually a piece of parchment paper is put in the bottom of the crust, and dry beans are used as "pie weights" on top. Or you can simply place another pie pan on top, though never forgetting the parchment paper.)

Recipe for ganache filling:

1/2 lb. bittersweet/semisweet chocolate
3 oz cream
2 oz butter
1 oz flavoring of choice (read: liquer or flavoring syrup, ala coffeeshop syrups, or espresso)

Using the never-fail ganache technique (chop up chocolate in processor, heat cream, pour into chocolate, let sit, blend to make emulsion, add mushy, room temperature butter, pulse, then add flavoring), prepare the ganache. Pour this into the cooled pie crust and cool until firm. Decorate with chocolate shavings or fruit. Besides the crust, this recipe is really, really easy. You could always have some prebaked pie crusts in the freezer, pull those out and add the ganache, and people will love you!

My flavoring of choice is Raspberry Port produced by Leelenau Cellars. Amazing stuff--it beats Chambord in my opinion, hands down.

Go make a pie!