Fourth of July= Pie and Blowing Things Up

I have to make some peach pies on Sunday for my family, and for those of you who are into some good ol' American pie for the 4th of July, I wanted to repost my vodka pie crust blog titled "American Pie and Vodka, and no I'm not Talking about Tara Reid." The crust is the most flaky, amazetastic pie dough you'll ever use, and yes, it uses vodka. I've heard that when you get it just right, rainbows spontaneously occur, and unicorns magically appear in your backyard.


Dear Tricia, I'm told my pie crusts are pretty good. But I ran into a recipe that calls for vodka! I know the alcohol would bake out, but why in the world would I even want to add it? (And if I was going to pick a booze to add, it would be tequila....)

Sometimes when I think I'm too much of a bad ass in the kitchen (or just too good at pretending like I am), I get an email like this that makes me think, "Wow. I really don't know!" So this was a fun one to research.
It turns out I'm not that behind on my baking skills, as this is a recipe that Cooks Illustrated (For those of you that aren't familiar, Cooks Illustrated is sort of like an awesome science magazine for recipes... everything is fool-proof and it never features Rachael Ray!) just developed last year that had most bakers scratching their heads. They suggested that you take half of the water in the pie crust recipe and substitute it with vodka. So, if your recipe calls for 1 cup of water, use 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup of vodka. "But why in the world would you want to waste good vodka?", you ask. If you'd rather have a martini than a glorious flaky apple pie, then get out of the kitchen and go ahead and get back on Facebook. But if you're willing to donate the martini to the pie crust, then this recipe guarantees the flakiest pie crust you'll ever taste. Here's why:

1. Gluten doesn't form in alcohol:
What the hell is gluten? Well, if you're a loyal reader, you should know this. But if not (shame on you!), here's a brief overview: if you've over-worked your pie dough and then try to roll it out, its super hard to get it to roll without it springing back like a piece of elastic. That's because it has a lot of gluten in it. As a visual, pretend that water and flour are like... thanksgiving. And too much thanksgiving = elastic pants.
When you mix water and flour together and keep stirring/kneading/over-all-messing-with it, gluten forms. Gluten is a natural protein that makes baked goodies like bread chewy. But when you're making pie dough, you don't want a lot of gluten to show up at the pie crust party because it makes the crust end up chewy and tough. This can be avoided by not over-working the pie dough. You simply mix the water/butter/flour together until it just forms a ball and then refrigerate it. It's also a lot easier to roll out that way. But as an added bonus (I feel like I'm channelling Billy Mayes here), gluten won't form in alcohol. It's like magic! For some strange reason, gluten just hates alcohol and stays far far away.

2. The alcohol evaporates in the oven:
Lets play pretend again. Pretend you have a really soggy and wet pie dough that you put in the oven to bake. What you're going to take out of the oven in 45 minutes is a doughy, heavy, definitely-not-flaky pie crust. Not enough of the water evaporated out of the dough so it just stayed gross and soggy. But what alcohol does is evaporate completely in high heats. (The same thing happens when you cook with alcohol... you keep some of the flavor but the boozy stuff disappears.) So if you're taking half of your water and substituting it for alcohol, half of the liquid is guaranteed to evaporate, and some of the water will evaporate too. This makes a flaky, light pie crust.

So why use vodka and not some other delicious liquor? Vodka is the most odorless, tasteless alcohol, so it leaves a classic pie crust flavor without any other interference. But if you prefer tequila (or bourbon, like myself. Helloooo Woodford Reserve), why not use it? Have a little nip for yourself and then try it out and let me know what happens. Any other liquor will have more sugar, which means your crust might possibly brown more, but keep a good eye on it while its baking and use some foil to cover the top if it happens to get too dark.
Another helpful hint I learned from researching this recipe is that the dough can be a little more wet and difficult to work with, so try rolling the dough out in between pieces of wax paper or parchment paper to avoid bigger mess to clean up later. But if you're sampling the tequila while baking, a mess might be unavoidable anyway. And I support that.

Here's the recipe:

2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon table salt
2 tablespoons sugar
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch slices
1/2 cup cold vegetable shortening, cut into 4 pieces
1/4 cup cold vodka
1/4 cup cold water

Procedure
1. Process 1 1/2 cups flour, salt, and sugar in food processor until combined, about 2 one-second pulses. Add butter and shortening and process until homogeneous dough just starts to collect in uneven clumps, about 15 seconds (dough will resemble cottage cheese curds and there should be no uncoated flour). Scrape bowl with rubber spatula and redistribute dough evenly around processor blade. Add remaining cup flour and pulse until mixture is evenly distributed around bowl and mass of dough has been broken up, 4 to 6 quick pulses. Empty mixture into medium bowl.

2. Sprinkle vodka and water over mixture. With rubber spatula, use folding motion to mix, pressing down on dough until dough is slightly tacky and sticks together. Divide dough into two even balls and flatten each into 4-inch disk. Wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 45 minutes or up to 2 days.

For similar blog entries, check out my archives under the titles, "Rootin' Tootin' Gluten" and "Whoever made up the phrase "Easy as Pie" was a Big Fat Liar."

Diana Ross, Daryl Hannah, and Your Meringue

Dear Tricia, The meringue on my key lime pie always weeps. Why does that keep happening?

I'm going to go back to one of my older blogs about egg whites and re-teach it here today because this is an email I frequently receive. Plus the original blog entry was really about why you add cream of tartar to play dough, so it might have been a little round-about. Before we begin, I want to point out to the non-bakers that meringue is a fluffy topping made out of egg whites and sugar. You whip them up until the egg whites turn from goopy clear stuff into a billowing cloud of solid white awesomeness. You just beat the egg whites and sugar together, right? No, not exactly.
Its common for meringues to "weep", or start to fall and leak out water. This is because when you whip egg whites, you're "coagulating" the protein in the eggs, which is a fancy pants term for protein bonding with other protein. When the proteins bond together, they hold in all the water that is floating around the meringue. If the proteins aren't doing that properly, the water will find a way to leak out, or "weep."
Under a microscope, egg whites are tiny strands of tightly wound protein. They look like a big mess of little corkscrew-y, spring-y shapes. Actually, they look a lot like Diana Ross' hair, post 1980. In order to get the egg whites to expand and turn into a fluffy meringue, you have to get them to straighten out. When they're fully expanded, they'll look like long waves of protein, triple the size of the corkscrew ones. If we're comparing apples to apples, the fully expanded protein will be shaped more like Daryl Hannah's mermaid hair in "Splash," all long and loose and wavy. If Daryl Hannah's mermaid hair is going to hold in water and actually remain stable, there are a few things you have to do:

1. Add about a half teaspoon of cream of tartar while you begin beating the eggs. Cream of tartar is like hair spray for Darryl Hannah's hair. If the proteins are bonding with all the other proteins, cream of tartar will make sure they stay bonded.*

2. Use room temperature eggs. Egg whites can be like demanding Hollywood actors: they have all their requests for how big they want their trailer, what kind of food they'll eat, who their co workers are, before they can do their job the best way they know how. Egg whites demand to be room temperature before they'll whip up into a meringue. It works better than using cold whites, so let them come to room temperature before you start whipping them. And no, leaving the egg whites out won't make you sick. A lot of bakeries, if they know what they're doing, leave egg whites out all the time for this exact reason.

3. Don't just turn the mixer on high and expect the whites to instantly fluff up. You have to gently persuade the proteins to unwind. Imagine trying to style Diana Ross' hair into Daryl Hannah's hair: you wouldn't just put a comb in at her scalp and pull, would you? No, that would probably break some of her hair off. Protein will also break if you just start whipping it as hard as you can. Start off by turning the speed on low for a few minutes. Let the whites loosen up a little and then turn it up to medium for a few minutes. Then move into high speed to finish off.

4. Don't dump all the sugar in at the beginning. As if trying to get the proteins to coagulate isn't hard enough, you're adding an extra ingredient to it that can get in the way. After you turn the mixer speed up to medium, wait for the eggs to start to get foamy. Then, and only then can you start to slooooowly add the sugar. How slow? You want to still be adding sugar to it right before the meringue is finished. This just makes sure that while the proteins are bonding with each other, the sugar doesn't interfere too much.

So, to summarize, be gentle with the egg whites, keep them at room temperature, and don't dump the sugar in at once. Got it? Avoid being rough, cold, and dumpy. In meringues and in life.


*Harold McGee's book, "On Food and Cooking," (also known as my Bible) recommends adding 1/16 teaspoon of cream of tartar per egg white.