(best Marlon Brando mumbling accent): You come to me on National Pie Day and you want to know what's for dinner?
What? You didn't know that January 23 is National Pie Day, not to be confused with March 14, National Pi Day? You're shuffling your feet and avoiding my eyes and acting like you don't know how to make a pie crust? You're not sure whether to include vodka in the crust or not? Come on down below the fold, where mysteries will be unveiled -- including pie's politics. First, some mood music:
Choices in life define us. Democrat or Republican? Pirate or ninja? Pie or cake? Some questions answer themselves:
Pie is Democratic.
Consider this: Cake has French royalist associations. It's been layered and stratified as Republicans want our society to be. It's been covered in eye-appealing frosting to hide its tasteless cardboard interior, gussied up, and sold to the masses as birthday entertainment. Pie, on the other hand, is made by hand in grassroots kitchens across America, it's homespun and honest and delicious all the way through, and it's social food. Don't believe me? Serve A Dream knows the value of pie in community. As does this guy:
True confession: for years, I made pies in a food processor. It's easier and faster. You put 1 cup of flour in the machine, add 1 tsp. salt and 1-2 Tbsp sugar, mix, then add 1 stick butter cut into pieces and process together until the mixture resembles coarse meal (more on this below), add up to 1 Tbsp water, and process about 1 minute, just before the mixture comes together to make one big doughy ball. Secret tip: If you process it for too long, about 1 minute and 1 second according to Murphy's Law of Piemaking, the dough will all clump together into one doughy ball. Try to stop processing just a few seconds before it gets to the one lump phase, while it's still in the several-lumps-plus-some-floury-bits-on-the-bottom phase.
I needed to bring two pies to a barbeque this summer and decided to try both crusts, food-processor and by-hand, side by side. The by-hand crust won. Hands down, handily. So now I do all my pie crusts by hand. You can, too.
The measurements are the same: first, mix dry ingredients -- 1 cup flour, 1-2 Tbsp sugar, and up to 1 tsp salt in a bowl. Then add 1 stick butter. Use a pastry cutter, which costs about $10 (photo credit: Sur La Table), or a very sturdy fork. Smush ("cut," in cooks' terminology) the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse meal.
All recipes say "coarse meal," but unless you grind your own flour you might not know what that means. I buy my flour in large sacks at Costco and have learned through trial and error that coarse meal is very large grained, somewhere between sand and fine gravel, and uneven. There will be a few larger (pea size is too large) chunks of butter. Then add liquid.
Ah, but what liquid? A few years ago, Cook's Illustrated proposed vodka instead of water, although Smitten Kitchen no longer likes vodka. In the interests of science, today I'm baking a pie with one-half vodka crust and one-half water crust.
Very important tip: use less water than you think you need. In a food processor, that's about 1 Tbsp water total. By hand, it's about 2-3 Tbsp water or 3-4 Tbsp vodka. If you add enough water to make your pie dough stick together in one large ball, you've gone too far. Pie dough should be crumbly, but not too crumbly. When you have the right consistency, you can pick up a chunk lightly and it will crumble, but will hold together if you apply pressure by pinching and squishing (and later rolling) the same chunk.
Crumbly-but-not-too-crumbly pie dough <----- <br>Same pie dough after squished with palm of hand ----->
Chill the dough for an hour or so while you gather your filling ingredients, roll out the dough, fill, pop into the oven, and you're done -- as easy as pie!
If you're still unsure why pie is better than cake, consider this song list (credit to bumblebums):
Petootie Pie - Ella Fitzgerald (you're such a tasty hunk o' pastry)
Mooseturd Pie - Utah Phillips
Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie - Jay & the Techniques
Honey Pie - Beatles
Country Pie - Bob Dylan
Cherry Pie - Sade
Flaming Pie - Paul McCartney
A Piece of the Pie - Randy Newman
Rhubarb Pie - John Fogerty
Sweetie Pie - Eddie Cochran
Sugar Pie, Honeybunch - The Four Tops
Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy - Dinah Shore
And, of course: