RAVALLI —
If you’ve ever baked a pie, you know the hardest part is not the hour it might take peeling and slicing apples, spicing them just right, or blending home-baked pumpkin to the consistency of pudding, or even selecting berries bright and plump and arranging them just so. No, the hardest part of pie making is the crust.
Anyone will tell you that, and it’s true.
Nancy Martin, of Ravalli’s Windmill Village, puts it simply.
“There’s good pie, and there’s great pie, and the difference is the crust.”
Martin, along with her husband David, runs the Windmill Village Bakery (and deli and espresso shop and gift shop — the little market is a cornucopia of handmade wonders). Martin’s specialty, along with home made donuts that rise as high as the Missions, is pie.
She’s been at it a while.
Martin uses the red-handled rolling pin given to her as a wedding gift 28 years ago. Through the years, she has perfected a thick, buttery crust that is both tender and flaky, characteristics not typically found in store-bought pastries. But to give a crust those characteristics takes time, and time, and a light touch.
“We’re used to store-bought, and our idea of good crust has changed,” Martin said.
“A great crust,” she said, “should be flaky and tender, and when you cut corners one of those things go.”
Martin said as people’s lives have gotten busier and busier, the art of pastry making has fallen off or been forgotten.
I know I fall into that category. As a child, I learned to make pie from my grandmother. But since my kids have started school and my life has gotten busier the pies I make now aren’t remarkable. They’re even uneventful. I wanted to refresh my skills. I wanted to learn how to make the best crust I’ve ever tasted. So I went to the source.
Pastry — and a good pie crust counts — needs to be made under a certain set of circumstances. Ingredients need to be chilled in order to blend perfectly, and chilling requires planning ahead. Pie crust is not a spur-of-the-moment thing to make, like cookies or batter cakes can be.
For Martin, who makes pies daily, there is no challenge to preparation. Flour, butter and mixing bowls are all kept in the cooler.
“The butter I cut up and put in the freezer. I keep my flour in the freezer. I use a metal bowl” that’s kept, yes, in the freezer.
One of the biggest corners that’s been cut, Martin said, is keeping everything cold to keep the butter from melting.
The other mistake made, said Martin, is overworking the dough.
“People don’t feel like they should leave chunks of butter.”
In addition, Martin said, “You want flour that’s low in protein.”
High protein flour, like that used for bread, contains a lot of gluten. Gluten, which forms into long elastic strands when liquid is added to flour, is great in giving a loaf of bread its rise and shape, but would make a pie crust tough and chewy.
Montana wheat, Martin said, is naturally high in protein,
So Martin uses locally-milled all-purpose flour, mixed equally with low-protein pastry flour.
For leavening, Martin uses two old time favorites: Butter and Crisco.
Martin uses far more butter than shortening in the crusts, and uses the new “no-trans fats” Crisco, she said smilingly, holding up a can. The shortening allows her to roll the pie crust at a greater range of temperatures.
All butter crusts, Martin said, must be kept very cold, and tend to tear easily as they’re softer.
Still, she said, “There’s no substitute for butter.” That’s proven in the taste. The Windmill’s pies are intoxicatingly buttery. You can almost feel your arteries clog.
“You want chunks of butter,” Martin said, pulling out a bowl with large pats from the cooler. “As you roll out the crust, the chunks flatten.” When baked, they create pockets within the layers of dough, creating the flakiness essential to good pastry.
The third ingredient necessary for a good crust is water. Ice water.
The water needs to be as cold as possible, to keep the fat from melting, Martin said. So, she adds ice cubes to it, and stores it in the freezer until she’s ready to go.
Once the dough has formed, Martin pulls out her red-handled wooden heirloom and gets to work, rolling a thick, yellow-dotted crust. “Good crust can be thick,” Martin quipped.
Martin carefully lifts her circle of crust, places it in a pan and brushes the bottom with egg white to keep it from becoming soggy during baking.
She mounds the pan with berries, tossed with just a spoonful of sugar, and gently places on a top crust, cutting decorative vents and crimping the edge with her thumb.
The resultant pie is a small mountain of golden crust and bulging berries just begging to be eaten.
Humbled, I feel I’ve watched an old-world expert. Excited, I’m willing to try pie crust again. When I do, I’ll follow Martin’s directions, and hope for the same success.
No comments:
Post a Comment