All about Pie

My young women's group wants to have a pie making class in November. They wanted to learn to make pumpkin pie from a can and from an actual pumpkin. Not knowing how to make a pie from an actual pumpkin i started my quest to find out.

First for the pie crust:
Did you know that all you need to make a pie crust is four things in the right ratio. Three parts flour, two parts fat, one part liquid and a pinch of salt.

Flour: you can use flour from all purpose flour to cake flour. Sence we all have all purpose flour i think this is the thing to use. (you can do part wheat flour if you want)

Fat:  This is wear it gets interesting. the kind of fat you use will determine flavor and flakyness of your crust. Using Butter will make it very flavorful but not as flaky. Using Shortening will make your dough easier to work with but won't be as flavorfull. Lard will make the flakiest crust, But who really want to use that i can just feel my hips growing bigger. So what is the anwser... Use a combination half butter, for tast and half shortening for texture. Note: if you want your crust crispier melt your butter before using it.

Liquid: can be a number of things, Ice water, fruit juice, egg yolks, sour cream, milk or cream. The trick is that when adding liquid to the dough it sould be ice-cold this keeps the pieces of fat, we have just discussed, cool and separate. We want to leave pea sized bits of fat in our dough. Also add liquid a tablesppon at a time, so you don't add to much. if the dough gets to wet you will need more flour throwing off your ratio and resulting in tough crust.

Salt: Don't forget to add it.

Other things you could add: spices, and wheat germ (this gives your crust a nutty flavor, but i tried it and it was good.)

As for the Pumpkin part of this pie, Blake said it was great. I think Blake is full of it and has to be nice and sweat about everything. It tasted squashy and needs some revamping before i would feed it to guests.

Happy creating and i will update you on my search for actual pumpkin pie.