7 Tips & Tools for Baking the Best Pies!

Hi Bold Bakers! You are in for a treat. I have pulled together my top seven tips and tools for baking the best pies. Whether you're making apple, pecan, pumpkin, you are going to kill it this holiday season. This video is made possible thanks to my partnership with GoodCook. In this video I'm going to be sharing with you some of my favorite GoodCook tools to make amazing pies. All of the information and the recipes that I use can be found on BiggerBolderBaking.com. So our first tip is a really important one. Keep your butter cold at all stages of the pastry making process. You know those lovely flaky pastries that you see? That comes down to cold butter. It's really important. So all along the way, butter cold, pastry cold, up until the very end. So one way to zip through pastry making with little to no fuss and handling is by using a Sweet Creations pastry blender. These tools are fantastic. They're really inexpensive and they just make really light work of pastry making. So like I said, keeping your pastry cold is key. So what you want to do is mix it, pop it into the fridge. After you roll it, pop it into the fridge. And then also even before you bake it, keep it in the fridge. It just makes all the difference to your pie crust. Tip number two, use as little flour as possible when rolling out your pastry. This is really important because pastry absorbs flour. That extra flour will actually make your lovely pastry heavy and actually quite tough to eat. When rolling out pastry, I like to use a Sweet Creations pastry mat. It makes it really easy to roll out your pastry because it's got a nonstick backing. And what I love is that it's got a size guide so you can check the size of your pastry. Also, it releases your dough easily, eliminating the need for that extra flour that we were talking about. So tip number three, what pie pan is best? Some popular choices are metal pie pans or stoneware dishes. Now stoneware dishes are beautiful. They're well insulated and they go from oven to table and make for great presentation. Also, they do tend to be a little bit deeper. So if you've got a pie with a lot of filling, this is the perfect choice. So for this, I recommend the GoodCook oven to table stoneware nine inch pie dish. So let's talk metal pie pans. Now metal conducts heat really well, making this pie pan a champ in the browning department. Also, it can freeze really well and it can go from freezer into the oven without shattering. For metal, I recommend the GoodCook nine inch pie pan. No matter what pan you use, both of those are great options. So tip number four, allow a little overhang to avoid your pastry from shrinking. Now what I mean by this is when you're rolling out your pastry, roll it out bigger than the diameter of your pie dish. Having this little bit of extra pastry means that if your pie actually shrinks, you still will have a lot of pastry to work with. And then once it's baked, you can just take that pastry off when it comes out of the oven. So for rolling my pastry, I like to use the Sweet Creations rolling pin with measuring guide. Now this is a fantastic tool and I'll tell you why. It allows you to get the exact thickness that you want of your pastry and you get the same thickness all over. So tip number five, do you need to blind bake your pie crust? Some recipes call for a par baked or even a fully baked pie crust before you add in your filling, just to avoid a soggy bottom. This method is called blind baking. Place your pastry in your pie dish, line it with a large piece of parchment paper, and then fill that with dry beans or dried rice. This will stop your pastry from puffing up during the baking. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 180 degrees Celsius until the dough looks matte instead of wet. It'll take around 20 minutes. If you need your pie crust fully baked, then after the 20 minutes, remove the beans, put it back into the oven for around 15 to 20 minutes, let it get nice and golden brown, and then take it out. Tip number six, baking your pie. You want to bake your pie on the lowest rack in your oven on a preheated tray and I'll tell you why. Because this will make the base nice and crispy. You're going to have your pie directly down at the bottom of the oven close to the heat source and then also putting it on a preheated tray will make sure that you get a nice crisp crust. And our last tip, you put so much work into your pie, make sure that it arrives in one piece. If you need to transport your pie this holiday season, you can use the Sweet Creations Carrier by GoodCook. Just add it in, snap on the lid, and you're good to go. A big thank you to GoodCook for sponsoring this video and for all the tips and the tools that I used, head over to my website. I'll see you back here really soon for more Bigger Bolder Baking.