Monday, August 17, 2009

Magazine Monday #45: Perfect All-Butter Piecrust

Well, this is Monday #1 of my hosting Magazine Mondays! To remind you, Ivonne, our usual host, is away, and in her place I'll be hosting until Sept.14th. So, if you've made a magazine recipe and would like to submit it here to be linked to, please send me an email at wandering_coyoteATyahooDOTca.

So, here is my post for today, and following are links to the post of other Magazine Monday participants.

Despite my training & experience, I'm not a huge fan of making pastry, as I've mentioned before. I've had so many failures it's embarrassing! My go-to recipes are this one from Gourmet and this one (scroll down) from an older cookbook. I make this one at work and it's been fine, though it is made with shortening, something I try to avoid like the plague. I'm always on the look-out for new pastry recipes, however, and I was intrigued by one I found in the most recent issue of Food Network Magazine. Touting itself as "perfect" I was skeptical - until I read the recipe. The butter content is extremely high compared to any other recipes I've seen & used. To 3.5 cups of flour, there is 1.5 cups of butter. Also, this recipe has a higher sugar content than most recipes; in fact, some pastry recipes have no sugar in them at all.

So, on the weekend, I gave this a go, and decided to use it to make a blueberry pie with some blueberries I got on wicked sale and froze a couple of weeks previously.

Food Network's Perfect All-Butter Pastry, from Aug./Sept. 2009

3 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups chilled butter, cubed
1 tbsp white or cider vinegar
1/3 cup ice water

Pulse dry ingredients in a food processor. Pulse in 1/2 cup butter until combined. Pulse in remaining butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add vinegar. Gradually pour in water, pulsing until combined. Turn out onto a clean surface & press into a cohesive dough without overworking (you should still see bits of butter). Press into a disk & wrap with plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least 1 hour before rolling out.

If you don't a have a food processor, don't worry. I don't; I used my hands, as I usually do when making pastry, and it was fine.

The dough was lovely! It rolled out beautifully!

The recipe made way more than enough for one pie, though. I got one deep dish blueberry pie and three decently-sized apple turnovers, using up some frozen apples I had from last year's apple harvest.

Here is the pie...
And here are the turnovers...My dad came over for dinner that night, and he sampled a turnover as an appetizer. The first thing he said was that the pastry was amazing, and that he could tell it was very rich with butter. So, I had a sample myself, and he was right: this is amazing pastry, and it is very rich! In fact, this is now my new favourite pastry recipe, I think.

Joining me in testing out magazine recipes this week are:

Wizzy The Stick of Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & Punch made some gave her hot dogs a makeover by making some gourmet dogs from Bon Appetit magazine.

Debbie of Dining with Debbie made a delicious-looking Brazilian Black Bean Soup from Cuisine at Home.

Paninigirl made a great Zucchini Curry from an issue of Gourmet from 2002.

Di of Di's Kitchen made her version of BBQ Braised Vietnamese Short Ribs with Sweet Vinegar Glaze from an issue of Fine Cooking.

Thanks for participating, you guys!

19 comments:

Tina said...

That is an amazingly delicious looking pie crust. I have not had success with pie crust - this looks terrific! OK...I'll try it next month. That will be one of my goals for September.

Cathy said...

I suck at pie crust, but will give this one a shot. I like that there is no lard in it.

Rosa's Yummy Yums said...

It looks perfect, indeed!

Cheers,

Rosa

Bob said...

That crust looks awesome. Hm, I have a couple recipes I wanted to try from my most recent Cooks Country. If I ever manage to do it I'll have to submit them to you. ;)

monicajane said...

love pastry..

when I was growing up my mom had a secret she no longer uses but it definitely makes the very most awesome pastry dough I've ever had...

lard!

yup...I've encountered a few others who know about this too or also grew up with it...but it's simply not used much anymore and in general people just go yuck! and don't believe how delightful it tastes.

your pie and tarts look lovely.

fruit pie is my favorite dessert.

Wandering Coyote said...

Monicajane: Oh, I used to make a lard pastry, too. I'm not a fan of the flavour, however, and prefer all-butter pastry.

Inspired by eRecipeCards said...

Coyote, I hope you are here I need some advice.

I am going to make an apple Pie today, using your crust. But I also want to have one to give as a gift in 5 days (visitors from Texas coming to a neighbor's house).

If I make this today, will it be OK in 5 days, or should I wait and make this in 4 days?

Probably more important to have one to give away, but it is cold and rainy here today, and an apple pie would brighten my day

HELP

monicajane said...

YONtheGrill,
just in case coyote doesn't get to you...

Pies freeze nicely...just take it out in advance enough to fully defrost...

though of course fresh pie is always better...

perhaps coyote will have a better suggestion...

Inspired by eRecipeCards said...

Monica, thanks for the advice,,,here's one last stupid question (feel free to visit me if you ever need advice on the grill, pies are not in my comfort zone...yet)

Can I assemble the pie and then freeze it, planning to bake it in 4 days...this would be my best solution, I want to serve a hot pie to my neighbors family...

30 minutes and counting til I have to decide what to do

dave

monicajane said...

hi again,
I'm not really sure the best way to do it...i"m not a pie baker either...I just know my mom baked pies and froze them...

google it...I'm sure you can get an answer there...

yeah, google freezing homemade pie...lots of stuff to look at!

shouldn't freeze custard pies for example...but fruit pie okay...

http://forums.cooking.com/showthread.php?t=5504

there is much more...I'm too tired to find a good one.

Unknown said...

that looks amazing! i will definitely have to try that recipe!

and i need to join this group considering that i get about 50 magazines each month!

Wandering Coyote said...

Dave: sorry I couldn't get to you until now - I just got in from work.

Monicajane is right, you can make the pie today & freeze it. If you don't bake it before freezing, give it plenty of time to thaw before baking. If you bake & freeze, again thaw it, and then just stick it in the oven at like 300 for half an hour or so to crisp it & warm it.

Let me know what you decided, and again, sorry for not being around this morning in your time of need!

Dewi said...

Oh wow, I can imagine how delicious they are. Perfect crust, buttery and flaky. Yum!

Palidor said...

That is a lot of butter, but the crust looks so mmmmm, good!

Tina said...

Coyote - I love your extra "u"s in words...flavour, colour....very endearing. ;-)

Wandering Coyote said...

Pierce: it's the Canadian way!

Heather S-G said...

Wow...this crust is gorgeous! You know, even though I always hear about Magazine Mondays from you, I've never actually checked it out...and I DO cook from magazines, so I'm definitely going to try to enter!

creampuff said...

Oh, that looks awesome! I love the pic of the rolled out dough with the rolling pin. And those pies ... mmmm ... hey ... thanks again for doing this! You're the best!

Donna-FFW said...

I love the pie crust! Your round up wnet wonderfully. I will be joingin by next week!

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