How To Make Homemade Pie Crust
How To Make Homemade Pie Crust
You spent the entire day out in the
orchard hand picking the finest apples one could reach. You collected a few
Granny Smiths, a cluster of Red Delicious, and of course, the delectable
Honeycrisp. Making a homemade apple pie has been on your bucket list for quite
some time now. However, can you really classify a pie as being homemade if the
crust is not? Put down the pre-made Pillsbury crust, and pick up a pastry
blender. It’s time to #MakePieCrustGreatAgain
INGREDIENTS
Ready in: 40 mins
Serves: 8 Quantity: Two crusts |
2 Cups Flour
|
1 Tsp. Salt
|
2/3 Cup Butter
|
5 – 7 Tbs. Water
|
1.
Prance
on over to the oven and preheat to 375 degrees. Get excited! This is going to
be #sweet. It's very important to have an oven thermometer to display an accurate temperature. Nearly all ovens run either hot or cold, so it's significant to be aware of your oven's tendencies!
2.
Place
flour into a large mixing bowl (Preferably one that compliments your apron J ) Pro tip: dumping flour over the sink ensures a clean execution / no mess!
3.
Rest
butter on top of flour and cut with a pastry blender. It is much easier to cut butter if it is room temperature! (In case
you’re a #BeginnerBaker, see below for what a pastry blender looks like J )
4.
Sprinkle
salt and add water to the mixture (Brownie points if you can look this graceful while doing so!)
5.
Mix
ingredients together until a soft dough is formed. Be careful not to over-beat the mix! You want an airy, dough texture, not a flat soup!
6.
Roll
dough out until it is flat
7.
Bake
dough for forty minutes until golden brown. Voila! Enjoy your homemade pie, and know you are #BakingTheWorldABetterPlace :)
Thank you for showing how easy making pie dough is (I didn't know it was this easy! I've always used Pillsbury--NO MORE!!) One little nit pick is that you say to roll the dough flat and then bake it. You forgot to tell the user to put it in a pie dish, or to fill it and fold it over to make a rustic crust. I used to work on sites that had recipes and the editor always told me to make sure all the little details were there because when people are cooking and baking if it's not in the recipe, they won't do it. LOL
ReplyDeleteI’ve never been able to make a pie crust that holds together, and that’s probably because I *definitely* over beat the mixture.
ReplyDeleteYour instructions were fun to follow along with, and I love your inclusion of both memes and helpful images. Structurally, this reads like an enthusiastic friend standing behind you in the kitchen. I agree with Lynn that people need each step spelled out, I know that if I don’t see it written, I won’t do it either (haha).
Great job on this Ava! I love all of your How-To steps laid out with pictures, especially Salt Bae. I also like how you incorporate hash tags in your posts with #sweet and other tags. Seems crazy to me that you make it seem so simple with only 8 steps, I have to try this out come holiday time. Awesome work overall.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed all the images and little pro tips that you put into this post- it really added some fun to the recipe (if baking isn’t already fun enough!).
ReplyDeleteI agree with the others that even the simplest things need get put in here, because some people just don’t know and even the best recipes can be confusing at times.
One suggestion I do have is to maybe add a little blurb in the beginning or end about how you tired this recipe! I have found that a lot of bakers tend to add their experiences to recipes and it helps give the reader some inside knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThe devil’s advocate assignment encouraged you to experiment, draft, and discover new thoughts and ideas. You turned yours into a meditation on playing devil’s advocate with recipes—and that was good.
It would have been more impressive if you rewrote a recipe. Instead of talking about writing something new—the goal is to write something new.
Once you have something new, then you have to ask: is it relevant to the world? Ideas aren’t useful if you can’t apply them to reality.
Writing a set of instructions is application. If you can write out a logical method for realizing an idea—then you’ve successfully applied it to reality.
If you can write a recipe that makes a great cake, that’s great. If you can write a recipe for a new kind of cake, even better.
And I’m not just talking about baking; I’m talking about writing.
A set of instructions also shares your thought process with your readers. It’s another example of clarity in good writing, which we spoke about at the beginning of the semester.
Look at how a simple, numbered, step-by-step approach improved everyone’s sentences and structure in this module. There’s much less clutter and much less hesitation in this type of writing because steps take action.
Once you come up with a better idea, and can explain and share it, then you have to convince your audience it's a better way too.
I don’t ask you to write a set of instructions for a new idea because that would be too difficult the first time around. Instead, I ask you to create instructions for a simpler task. Your piecrust instructions are practice for inserting more clarity and logic into all of your writing.
You relied on pictures. I told you not to do that because pictures are cheating. The challenge is to instruct with words alone. That’s when you know you are a good writer.
Words also give you the opportunity to make this more your recipe, and your knowledge. The best examples of this assignment don't teach us how to make a piecrust, but your piecrust.
Good writing instructs the reader how to follow your train of thought to your conclusions. If you think of everything you write as a set of instructions—or a recipe—it reminds you to remember the reader.
Consider your classmate, @LynnDeming. She’s wants us to think about health and exercise in a different way—as play. And @DottyStripes? She, like many people in her industry, want to come up with a better car. And @JohnnyBrady? He wants to share his life experience to amuse, entertain, and inspire us.
Those are all forms of instruction. Even Johnny has to work on his delivery, clarity, and logic in addition to his storytelling. It’s also part of comedy, and fiction, and journalism too.
Think about how hard it is to get you to change your exercise habits, or buy into a new technology, or read a new book. Changing the audience’s mind and behavior is intimidating—a big challenge to writing.
Yet also look at how much work you’ve produced in this short time span. Little by little, writing builds in response to missions of any size, especially when you think in drafts.
This tension, between the devil’s advocate and the real world, is the tension between your imagination and your internal editor. Good writing is an equal partnership between the two.
When you think and write with both minds, it's a tremendous asset.
Good work.