Why blind bake pie crust

Fortunately, avoiding this deformed fate is easy. You just have to weigh the shell with a temporary filling as it bakes, allowing the dough to crisp up and hold its shape. Or, take for example, a key lime pie. This is also a common approach when it comes to baking a savory quiche. Any variety of pie crust you may wish to use can be blind baked.

This includes graham cracker and other cookie crumb crusts as well as those that incorporate ground nuts into the equation. Below, is a step-by-step guide for blind baking a pastry dough crust A. As mentioned above, this is slightly but just slightly! You can purchase legitimate pie weights from craft and hobby stores that sell baking supplies, or online.

These are small, rounded pieces of metal or ceramic that you can use to weigh down your crust during blind baking. However, you can employ any number of objects around the house to serve this same purpose. Blind baking a pie crust calls for filling the bottom crust with pie weights to keep the pastry from puffing up in the oven.

But if you don't own pie weights, there's no need to purchase them. Instead, check your pantry for dried beans or uncooked rice—both will work just as well as pie weights. You won't be able to cook or eat the beans or rice afterward, but they can be used over and over again for blind baking, so label them clearly and store them with your other baking supplies.

It may be called blind baking, but you need to keep a close eye on your empty pie shell, especially the edges. If you notice that the pastry is browning too much or even burning around the edges, cover that area with foil.

If your pie needs to go back in the oven after blind baking, leave the protective foil intact. It's possible to wrap and store a fully baked pie shell and fill it later, as many bakeries do. The first possibility is that your pie crust wasn't chilled enough.

If the butter is too soft, your crust will melt before it has a chance to actually bake. Pie crusts must be chilled before baking. A second possibility was that the oven was at too low of a temperature, and similarly to the butter being too soft, the crust melted before it has a chance to bake. A third and more likely case is that the sides weren't supported enough. Make sure that the parchment paper is pushed directly up against the sides of the crust, and the pie weights are supporting them.

This is crucial to ensuring your pie crusts edges don't sink in before they get a chance to fully bake and stabilize. A: For a partial blind-bake, the edges of the pie crust will be light golden, and the bottom of the pie crust will not look raw or wet in any areas, and will be very light in color, but fully cooked through. It should appear flaky. For a full-blind bake, the edges of the pie crust will be light golden, and the bottom of the pie crust will also be puffy and light golden in spots.

Bake it for longer! Oven temperatures may vary, so if your pie crust is still a bit uncooked in the alloted amount of time, bake it for longer. A: There are two possible reasons for this. The first is that the pie crust wasn't completely chilled. The pie dough also may have been overworked. If the pie dough is overworked, the gluten is fully activated the pie crust will shrink and become misshapen during the bake. Some of the links on this page may be affiliate links.

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It is necessary to brush egg wash on the bottom and sides of the crust before return it to the oven? Some people say it creates a waterproof layer but does it really work?

Thank you. It's not at all necessary, but depending on the filling, it can help. I use this technique in my lemon pie recipe, and you can see the instructions here: Lemon Custard Pie.