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That time at my aunt's kitchen in Ohio changed how I make pie crust forever
I was visiting my aunt in Ohio about 8 years ago and she watched me struggle with a sticky pie dough for like 20 minutes. She finally grabbed my bowl and said "you're overworking it honey, just stop touching it so much." She showed me her trick of freezing the butter first and grating it into the flour (which I'd never seen before). I went from making decent pies to actually winning our church bake sale two years in a row after that. Does anyone else have a random family member who totally changed their baking game with one simple tip?
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allen.kai27d ago
Whoa, hold on. You're grating frozen butter into flour for pie crust? That's great for biscuits like your grandma did, but for pie, you actually want the butter to stay in bigger pieces. If you grate it, the butter melts into the flour too evenly and you lose those flaky layers. You want flat, pea-sized chunks of cold butter so they create steam pockets when they hit the oven. Grating works fine for a short, tender biscuit, but a pie crust needs that uneven distribution of fat to get the flake right. I learned that the hard way after a few sad, dense pies.
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sage30827d ago
Aunt Carol from Toledo taught me the vodka trick. She said pie crust doesn't need magical skills, it just needs less water and a little booze to keep it tender. I was stubborn and thought she was crazy until I tried it and my crust stopped turning into shoe leather. Now I keep a little bottle of cheap vodka in the freezer just for pies. Makes me feel like a sketchy baker but hey, it works.
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diana61728d ago
Oh man, that butter grating trick is a game changer. My grandma did something similar with her biscuits, she'd freeze the butter and grate it in too. I never tried it for pie crusts, but now I have to give it a shot. It's funny how one simple tip from family can totally fix something you've been fighting with for years.
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