Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Pastry School- Pie Dough

This was my favorite project at pastry school.  I've made a lot of pies, and although I understand the basic principles of making a flaky pie crust, I am not able to do it with consistent results.  We used the big 20 quart mixers to make a batch of 9 pie shells- 3 for each group member.  The photo above shows the dry ingredients and butter.  Notice the huge piece of butter in the pan.
The butter is being worked into the flour.  There are now smaller pieces of butter.
Turning out the dough, now with added ice water, onto the table top.
Our group's pie dough.  Notice the huge smears of butter.  The sad face on the little one is to show that it is smaller than the others.
Apples waiting to go in the pies.  I peeled, cored and sliced 2 1/2 flats of apples for the pies.  We did one communal filling recipe.  I was constantly impressed with the large volumes of ingredients during my week there.
 My crusts ready for filling.





We did a lattice crust for the apple pie.  Not traditional, but I was happy to be able to try this.
My pecan pie ready to go into the oven.  
My baked apple pie.  I was a little disappointed with the apple pie.  The apples weren't cooked enough, and the filling had cornstarch, instead of flour as a thickener.  The crust came out great, though.
Pecan pie ready to go home.  These were really good!

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