Recipe Station

The dreaded gap occurs every so often and is very frustrating for any baker. It occurs mostly with fruit pies that utilize large chunks or larger slices of fruit. Here is what it would look like:

Solution: 

• Use a crust made with butter, not shortening or lard: Shortening and lard (used in store-bought crusts) have higher heat tolerances than butter, which means you will not see a decent browning on your crust until the end of your cook time. By that time though, the inside of your pie will be overcooked and flat. King Arthur Flour has a wonderfully simple butter crust recipe. It might seem daunting, but half of those steps are for baking the pie itself, not making the crust.
• Vent! Vent like the wind! The hot steam produced by your filling is going to need a way to get out. If you have crimped your edges sufficiently, all that steam will try to escape upwards until it finds a weak seam. Cut a few more slits—six 3-inch slits should do it—or you could go the Alton Brown route and use a pie bird, an elegant solution from a more civilized age.
• Cook your apples first: Kenji’s recipe on Serious Eats discusses this by pouring boiling water (or cider) over the apples and letting them par cook before draining. This leads to them releasing less liquid during cooking, but what is released will need a good helping of starch to keep it from becoming a sea of failure.

And finally for all those times where your pie crust has been soggy and stuck to the pie plate or tin. 

Solution:

• Blind bake: Though this is traditionally aimed at single crust pies, you can blind bake for a double crust as well. Food52 has a great guide for this—a quick 12-15 minutes in the oven will lend a firm crust that won’t be easily penetrated by the liquid released from your filling. The trade-off here is that you won’t be able to flute your crust, and instead have to crimp with a fork. Still, it’s a worthy sacrifice for a delicious dessert.
• Brush with egg wash: An easier solution since you’ll likely be using it for the top crust of a fruit pie anyway, brush the raw crust with egg wash. The egg will help to firm the crust long before the filling releases any pie-ruining liquid, leaving you with a crisp bottom. This works especially well for double crusted pot pies, which in many cases use a hot filling before they’re added to the shell.
• Go lower in the oven: The simplest answer is always the best. Place your pie plate on a cookie sheet in the lowest part of your oven. The radiant heat will cook the upper parts of the pie slower, allowing the crust to firm up at an even pace. While some will recommend that you preheat the cookie sheet, it is best not to do this with a Pyrex-style plate.

What are your go-to pie baking hacks? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: Lifehacker