Grand Cooking

by Joanne Carr
Grand Island Dispatch, November 17, 2006

Perfect piecrust doesn’t have to make you flaky

If you really like to cook, you will watch for those little gifts that magazines and newspapers offer to readers – recipes. And, if you are like I am, you likely can look at a recipe and almost instantly assess whether it is doable and in your taste or definitely not worth the paper it is printed on.

So what if it takes a little more time than those supermarket boxed mixes take to put together a grand meal – once in a while enjoy what you do, and friends and family will delight in what you do, as well.

Now, I will give you a way to defeat an old villain – piecrust – as it worked out for me.

I found this recipe right here in the Island Dispatch of Friday, May 13, 1983, in the column entitled “Cooking Grand.” I am happy to be the next writer of the column, for this paper.

The recipe was for “Perfect Pie crust.” Instantly, I knew! “This I will try! And if it works, there will be no more banishing my family from the kitchen while I put a pie together.

I am a crabby cook if a recipe goes badly. I have been known to use foul language and to shout at anyone who gets within eyesight as I fumble with unruly pie dough.

I began baking pies as a teen-ager. I worked in the kitchen of the restaurant at the Administration Building of Allegany State Park at Red House. Back then, I did it all by the book – chilled vegetable shortening and cold water added tablespoon by tablespoon – the whole fussy bit.

But now, to my astonishment, the recipe for Perfect Piecrust worked.

Here it is:

4 cups flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon sugar (I don’t put this in my mix)
1 1/4 cups solid vegetable shortening
1 tablespoon (cider) vinegar
1/2 cup water

Put flour, salt (and sugar) into a large bowl. Whisk to blend.

Add shortening and, using a pastry blender or two table knives, mix until shortening disappears.

In a smaller bowl, whisk water, egg and vinegar together.

Pour liquid over flour mixture, using a fork until all ingredients are blended.

Divide dough into five flat rounds. Wrap each in plastic wrap. Put rounds in the refrigerator to chill for about an hour, or freeze them. Rounds will keep for three or four months, if frozen.

(To use, of course, thaw rounds. I usually take them out of the ’fridge the night before I am going to bake, and they are thawed by morning.)

When dough is chilled, you are ready to roll out your piecrust.

Flour the surface that you will be working on and flour your rolling pin. Roll your round out into a circle that is two inches larger than the pie pan.

Roll from the center out. Then lift an edge of the circle onto your rolling pin, rolling it carefully – then unroll it onto your pie pan.

You know the rest or, if you must, look up a recipe in your trusty cookbook.

As the Island Dispatch declared back then, this recipe is “infallible.”