What did Wimpy say? “I’ll pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”? Well Monday’s pie became today’s pie after a fire in the oven. No payment though.
Apparently a disadvantage to the small interior box of the countertop oven is that one (uhhh, me) must remember to trim the flying edges of the parchment paper I tuck onto the crust to hold the beans for prebaking. It’s okay though. Turns out that the crust I had in reserve which was made with milk instead of water is better suited to a savory filling anyway. So I threw away the fire victim had a beer, and started over. Pecan Pie may not be seasonal, but it was the most frequent request (from the same person, David at KCRW). So I thought, why not? I added a few bittersweet chocolate chunks to change it up and made an extra big Pie for the underwriting department.
The interesting moment of this pie came with the crust. Since I decided to start fresh I took another look at Rose Levy Barenbaum’s crust repetoire in her The Pie and Pastry Bible. I choose a very buttery crust in which she uses a little vinegar. But what I liked and think I will retain as a standard technique is the way she adds the butter for a food processed dough. She divides the total butter into one third and two thirds. The one third is cut into chunks and frozen. The two thirds is added to the flour and processed without pulsing until the dough looks like fine crumbs. You then add the frozen butter and pulse three times. The result is a dough which has butter both mixed throughout and in larger blobs. It was crisp, flaky and buttery indeed.