Daring Bakers, June: Life of Pie

Rachael from pizzarossa was our lovely June 2013 Daring Bakers’ host and she had us whipping up delicious pies in our kitchens! Cream pies, fruit pies, chocolate pies, even crack pies!

Rachael provided recipes for Momofuku Milk Bar's famous crack pie, a French chocolate and caramel tart, a double-crust apple pie, and an Italian crostata di marmellata. I'd made each of these before, and I decided to go for the crostata because I wanted only a couple of servings for my boyfriend and myself, and this was the easiest to reduce and we had the ingredients already on hand--namely, some delicious fig jam I needed to use up.




I estimated how much dough I needed for each tin, then rolled out each dough ball between two pieces of cling wrap.


I made sure the dough was rolled out thinly, and wide enough to cover the bottom of the tin.


I took off one sheet of plastic and stuck the dough into the tin, then pressed the dough down into the tin before removing the top sheet of plastic.


I pressed the edges of the dough down against the tin to trim the edges.


I removed the excess dough and set it aside so I could roll it out for the top.


I blind-baked without beans because it was so small (and I was lazy). I docked the dough with a fork and let the dough-lined tins rest in the fridge for half an hour to lessen shrinkage while blind-baking. Also, remember not to spray the tin--that ensures the dough can cling a little to the tin.


A little shrinkage, but not much.


Another reason I wasn't bothered by the shrinkage is because crostata filling is a layer of jam, and I didn't want a whole lot of jam.





Check out my fellow DBers' sweet pies by clicking through our our blogroll.