Ever since I began watching the British Bake Off on Netflix, I’ve slowly become self conscious of baking pies with the dreaded “soggy bottom”. While I’d always made decidedly delicious, crowd pleasing pies, I couldn’t say they’d pass Paul Hollywood’s discerning eye. Thus, I decided to up my pie game by learning to make a moisture-resistant par-baked crust.
Being that it was around Halloween, I decided to test this new method by making pumpkin pie. Little did I know it would take baking about five pies until I finally had a successful one.
I ended up with dark edges and a wet middle more than once. When I peaked into the oven, I watched in dismay as heaps of butter bubbled out of my pie.
Therefore, I was in complete disbelief when I opened the oven during the fifth attempt to see everything baking according to plan. No butter bubbles, beautiful golden edges, and a dry center. I really thought I cracked the code on par-baked crusts that day, but apparently I still have some learning to do.
Nevertheless, I am sharing exactly what I did to have success, as well as some subsequent attempts where I seem to have backslid. The point of this is to pinpoint the key conditions that must be in place in order for this crust to work.
Exactly What I Did to Par-Bake the Perfect Crust
I hope my story of successfully baking a par-baked pie crust gives you hope that it can be done. It does for me, as I struggle to replicate it.
Here are all the things I switched up that ultimately led to success:
What I Was Doing
On my four attempts, I was using measuring cups to scale out all my ingredients. I was also using cute ceramic pie shells I’d been given as gifts over the years.
I also was not being very diligent in putting a cover over the edges of the crust. The metal ring I had on hand seemingly offered no protection – a conclusion I drew after baking two pies with black edges.
I was using Land O’Lakes butter and leaving large chunks in my dough with the hope of achieving ultimate flakiness.
My Learnings After Five Tries at Par Baking
As mentioned in my intro, 4/5 tries saw butter bubbling on out of my par-baked shell. Since I needed to bake it way to long to achieve a dry middle, my edges were turning black.
Over all these tries, I made a lot of changes. When I finally found success, these are the adjustments I had made:
- Butter: I switched from Land O’Lakes to our local grocery stores brand: Heinen’s. I began to fear that Land O’Lakes has too much water content that was affecting my butter situation. However, this I can neither confirm nor deny. All I know is that this is one factor I switched before I had my first successful shell. I also recommend trying European butter, which has a higher fat and lower water content.
- Pie plate: I had a great lesson in types of pie plates when doing this experiment. This is where I learned that metal is by far a better conductor of heat than glass or ceramic. Glass is the next best option. There are also some ceramic that are designed for performance such as those of Emile Henry. You’ll want a pie plate that conducts heat as efficiently as possible so that the bottom of your crust begins to cook rather than facilitating the slow melt of your butter. I had two successful pie shells using both a glass Pyrex and Emile Henry white ceramic dish. I am very skeptical of using cutesy ceramic pie dishes going forward.
- Chilling the pie shell: You’ll want your dough to be nice and chilled before you put it in the oven. This too will help prevent the melting of butter during baking. I actually chilled the pie plates while I was rolling out the dough. When I put the dough in the plate to refrigerate after rolling, the plate was already nice and cool.
- Cutting the butter into the flour: What I learned during my experiments was that perhaps blind baking is not the best time to keep larger pieces of butter in your dough. I know this can work for other people, but it did not work for me. Instead, using my hands, I cut my butter into pea size pieces, making sure they were well coated in flour. The key is to make sure all your butter chunks are completely coated in flour when you go to roll out the dough. Any exposed flour will melt right out of the shell when you put it in the oven. I’d like to try again with larger chunks and see if I can incorporate them better. However, the next time I will bake pie is on a holiday, so I’d prefer to experiment during a lower risk time.
- Weighing out the ingredients: Sadly, measuring cups can be pretty unreliable when it comes to baking. Pie dough is simply one of those things that need to be precise, especially the butter and flour. When I weighed out my cups, it turned out the weight was higher in grams than what the recipe was calling for, thus I was adding too much flower to my dough. Too much flour means I was also adding too much water to compensate so that my dough wasn’t too dry. I am convinced that it’s crucial to add a smaller butter to water ratio than this, otherwise it will lead to the butter leakage problems that I was having. Both of my successful crusts used weighed out ingredients in the proper ratio.
Update 1:
Leading up to Thanksgiving I made a rushed apple crumble pie and had the melting butter situation all over again. Apparently I haven’t quite cracked the par-baking code yet. Here’s what I did:
- Used Heinen’s butter
- Used a glass dish
- Tried to cut the butter into the flour as much as I could
- Weighed out ingredients. However, my dough was just a touch wetter than I would have preferred.
- Only chilled the pie plate for like 15 minutes before putting the dough inside.
- Chilled the dough for about 30 minutes after rolling it out. I think on my next attempt I will try chilling for 1-2 hours.
Update 2:
Two days later on Thanksgiving I tried again while using my ceramic pie plate. This time I chilled the crust for about two hours before baking it.
This attempt seemed better, as the crust didn’t lose any butter on the edges while the pie weights were inside. Unfortunately, I lifted the parchment paper holding the weights to reveal a puddle of butter on the bottom.
This ceramic dish had made a successful crust before, so I don’t think I can blame that. Rather, I wonder if the pizza stone I baked it on was not pre-heated enough.
For my successful attempt I had preheated the pizza stone for about an hour. This time it was only about 20-25 minutes.
The next time I attempt a par-baked crust, pre-heating the pizza stone for longer is the one alteration I am going to make. If that doesn’t work, I’ll be left scratching my head about how I once made two successful par baked crusts that I can’t seem to replicate!
The one thing I haven’t yet tried is using a metal pie dish. Metal is supposed to be the best conductor of heat, and theoretically offers the best chance at successful par-baking.
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In conclusion, I’m not sure how important it actually is to avoid making a pie with a soggy bottom. For now, I am still going to experiment with par-baked crust on single crust pies. However, I’m not going to worry about this with my beloved double crust fruit pies. No one else ever has!