A Whole New Way with Pie Dough
Including: Nicole Rucker's Raspberry Rhubarb Blood Orange Pie, Melissa Clark's Carrot Muhammara, and Clare De Boer's Spring Wedding Soup.
Hey everyone,
Some people have late-in-life religious conversions; I’m having a late-in-life conversion of my own, only this one concerns pie dough.
I’ve been a fan of Nicole Rucker forever — I even had my fortieth birthday at her short-lived restaurant Fiona — and when we made the decision to move back to NY from LA, I had to think long and hard about bidding farewell to Nicole Rucker the person and also Nicole Rucker’s delicious baked goods.
Thankfully, she has a new book out called The Fat and Flour Cookbook, named after her beloved L.A. bakery.
The book is filled with fascinating techniques, including a cold butter cookie approach that has me riveted (I’m always waiting for my butter to come to room temperature to make cookies), but the one that really caught my eye is her pie dough technique which won her four out of seven blue ribbons at the KCRW Good Food Piefest and a blue ribbon in the National Pie Contest.
Right out of the gate it’s a unique recipe: instead of setting aside some ice water, you flavor 2 ounces of cold water with 2 tablespoons of dark brown sugar, 2 teaspoons apple-cider vinegar, and 1 teaspoon of Diamond Crystal kosher salt. The idea here is that “every speck of flour” gets hydrated “with seasoned liquid.”
The next unique thing? You make the pie dough in a KitchenAid mixer. As a former proponent of a food processor, then a “by hand” maven, this approach had me raising an eyebrow but now makes so much sense to me. You add 1 stick (8 ounces) of cold, cubed butter to 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, and let the mixer do its work. The paddle slowly breaks the butter into “uneven pebbles” in about 2 to 4 minutes and doesn’t heat things up the way a food processor does.
Then you pour in your liquid and let everything come together:
I added a little bit more water so it formed “a shaggy dough” then dumped it on to my flour-dusted board, where Nicole has you knead it a few times.
Once it comes together, you pat it into a 6 X 8 rectangle, position the short side towards you, and roll out to an 8 by 12 inch rectangle.
Finally: you fold the bottom third 2/3rds of the way toward the top, the remaining third of the dough down over the rest of the dough “like you were folding a letter.” Cut the dough into two portions…
Wrap each it plastic and shape into a disc and there you have it: the most pliant, easy to roll out pie dough that I’ve yet encountered.
To put it to the test, I made Nicole’s recipe for Raspberry Rhubarb Blood Orange Pie (only I couldn’t find blood oranges, so I just used some regular ol’ oranges).
This combo is so winning: unlike your traditional strawberry rhubarb (which I made just a few newsletters ago) this one has a subtler, more elegant perfume. It’s not a ton of filling but it gets the job done.
So how did the crust turn out? Despite it having only one stick of butter (unlike my usual recipe that has two sticks), Craig — our resident pie guru — declared this crust “far better” than my usual crust. It was flakier, more tender, and also held its crimp better. All-in-all: this looks like my new go-to pie dough technique. Praise the Lord! Actually, praise Nicole Rucker.
Wow, I used a lot of space on that pie dough. In other recipe news, I made Melissa Clark’s carrot muhammara from her Dinner: Changing the Game, which might be her very best cookbook (and that’s saying a lot; I just bought it on Kindle).
It may sound fancy, but essentially you just roast some carrots, some red peppers (note: her cooking time for the carrots may vary based on your oven; she says an hour at 400, but mine were starting to turn black after 30 minutes, so take them out just when they’re deeply caramelized), and blitz them up with toasted walnuts (be sure to toast your walnuts!), garlic, ginger, cumin, chili flakes, lemon juice, and lots of olive oil.
Here’s the recipe as a PDF, in case you want to give it a go. It’s a perfect warm weather appetizer; not too heavy, but still indulgent.
Finally, in my last newsletter I linked to Clare De Boer’s Spring Wedding Soup (I’m obsessed with her newsletter) and instantly had to make it. So here’s the resulting video:
It was so good. Okay here’s a picture for good measure:
Trust me: this is one of the best things you can make this spring.
Hey, let’s look at some links:
Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for Brazilian-style carrot cake (The Guardian);
Food bloggers accuse influencer of plagiarizing recipes (People);
The best picnic baskets and blankets (Eater).
That’s all for today, folks!
See you back here on Thursday….
Your pal,
Adam
As a former pie-maker who quit years ago after too many gummy and/or soggy bottoms, what about blind-baking the pie crust? Was the bottom of your pie crust crisp enough?
Getting ready to order your book.....
Interesting. Will test it out.