Day 128 - Basic Single Pastry Crust

Basic Single Pastry Crust

Boy, did I botch this!

And I should know better. I've made a few pie crusts in my day. But this was the first time not doing it in the food processor. I wanted to go by the book, and I+T wanted me to use a pastry cutter to blend the flour and shortening, and I own one, so I tried it.

Oy.

I don't know what I was thinking. I cut it way too fine. And then, the part where you gather the dough into a ball, I kept on thinking that my dough was wet enough to hold, but it wasn't, and I ended up kneading it, and then adding some water, and then kneading it some more, and then adding more water, etc. By the end, I'm sure I had melted all the shortening and started causing some major gluten development, exactly what you DON'T want in a pie crust.

But I thought, maybe somehow it'll magically be OK for tomorrow's Mango and Pear Pandowdy....

FYI, a tip for rolling it out: you can keep the plastic wrap you wrapped your dough in and use it on top of the dough as you're rolling it out. With the plastic on top and the parchment on the bottom, it makes rolling a no-brainer.

SFO: 10