What better way to start a morning than by extolling the virtues of butter and lard? Zingerman's avoids shortening because natural animal fats taste better and do not contain trans fats. So we got to work making a butter crust. The ingredient list looked familiar, but the way we formed the dough was a little different. After mixing the flour and salt, we cut in 3/4 of the butter with a pastry blender. Then we dug in with our hands to fully coat every flour particle with fat until the butter disappeared. It took 3 or 4 minutes to make the mixture the right consistency - about that of cornmeal - but apparently there isn't danger of overworking the dough until the water is added. (The water can react with the gluten in the flour to make a tough crust.) We added the rest of the butter but left it in small chunks and gently mixed in 5 tablespoons of chilled water with a fork. Next came an entirely new technique: schmearing. We dumped the contents of the bowl onto the work space and pushed the mixture outward with the palms of our hands creating sheets of moistened dough. With a bench knife, we scraped the sheets into a pile and formed a mound. This mound then became two disks that we wrapped in plastic wrap and set in the refrigerator before rolling.
Rolling involved new techniques in part because we used tapered French rolling pins. The rules: roll toward or away from yourself; turn the dough 1/8 of a turn after each roll to make sure the dough doesn't stick to the counter; center the pin until the dough is the size of the bottom of the pan, then move the pin to one side and roll the edges out. I got pretty close to an even circle here!
The small cracks at the edges were easily concealed when I rolled the excess under and crimped. Success!
Next, we made a crust with half butter, half lard. Zingerman's is pretty picky about its ingredients and orders special lard that is non-hydrogenated like some lard available in the grocery store. The process was the same, but the dough was wetter and more flexible because of the lard. Success again!
With the butter shell we made a lemon chess pie, and the lard dough was used for a double-crust apple pie. The fillings were a snap to make because all the ingredients were pre-measured, delivered to us, and all the dirty dishes were carted away - it was a beautiful thing! We didn't even have to put on an oven mitt. I could get used to having multiple assistants in the kitchen. Here's a super candid photo of me with my mountainous apple pie.
Taste test - positive. Better pies in my future - I think so. With this training under my belt, I just might be ready for Pie Crust 101 with Mom. :)
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