I have traditionally made the Thanksgiving pies, but D picked up a phenomenal sweet potato pie from a local bakery a couple years ago when H & I traveled to his parents’ for Thanksgiving; our kids stayed home & had Thanksgiving together without us. They raved about the pie, so I happily told her to get it the following year. It was amazing, and it became a tradition. Alas, the bakery was struggling financially earlier this year and changed their business model. They are now mostly a pop-up, and while they have a Thanksgiving menu, no sweet potato pie (and the available packages are too expensive for me). Maybe I can find a recipe for a great sweet potato pie!
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Can you split the package with a few friends? I love to bake (not great at it but I enjoy it) but endless vegetable chopping is a chore for me. I have friends who hate to bake but will happily do two fancy salads and a grilled vegetable platter at the drop of a hat. And a mostly vegetarian friend who claims that if she ever tried to roast a turkey she’d make everyone sick with listeria.
We split up a fancy package from a caterer a few years ago and it worked out great. We eyeballed what we wanted and kicked in the estimate of what it should cost- split up the order in a friend’s kitchen and each took home what we needed to augment our meal. We had enough leftover cash (people were generous with their estimates) to make a donation to the local food pantry which was purchasing produce to augment the turkeys (donated by a local grocery chain) and dinner rolls/desserts (the family owned bakery— they give to EVERYTHING.) Win win win win.
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Ok, this is not for the Bolivian Saltenas, but I do make some great biscuits. A tip for folks who don’t bake a lot is I keep my biscuit flour rather than my butter in the freezer. The butter gets used much more often for toast, sautéing, etc, but the biscuit flour (it’s self-rising) only gets used when I make biscuits which is much less often than I use butter in my kitchen. The frozen flour keeps the butter cold when I grate it into the flour. Works a treat!
Also with the crust springing back like that when you are rolling it, I’d just let it rest for 5 minutes or so, then try again. Just roll it out, and walk away for 5 minutes and come back and finish rolling it.
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I also use grated frozen butter for my pie crust. Sometime half butter and halt frozen Crisco.
Another thing I do when baking pies–use a glass pie plate. Ceramic is too heavy and heats very slowly, undercooking the bottom crust so you get soggy pie. Metal is OK, but I find glass works better.
Also, with glass you can lift the pie plate up and look at the bottom to make sure it’s browned before you take the pie out of the oven.
If you don’t want to brush your top crust with milk/cream/egg, you need to add sugar (2tsp/1tbsp) to the dough to get to brown nicely in the oven. With a sweet filling, you’ll never notice the sugar in the pie dough, but it makes big difference in the pie’s appearance.
For heavier or savory fillings like pot pies or terrines–use a hot water pastry dough. (Thank you Paul Hollywood for the tip!) It’s sturdier and less likely to to break. It works great for hand pies which need to a sturdier crust. D makes a killer vegetable masala hand pie using hot water pastry. (They freeze great and will keep a couple days in the fridge without getting soggy.)
Also true for pizza dough. I make pizza all the time for the grands. (They call it Grandma pizza and like it better than the fancy New Haven Style pizza their parents prefer–probably because the crust is softer and less chewy.) I will spread the dough by hand on an oiled cookie sheet, let it rest if it insists on shrinking back, spread it some more, rest….
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Love this! 
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Learned this in a chefs class (and Home Ec) when we made Lemon meringue! I use the Pyrex for pumpkin and berry pies.
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I have no issues with baking pies in my Le Creuset ceramic pie dish. Even heat distribution from bottom to the sides, and I always cover pie edges with foil 1/3 way into baking.
When I am making my dough balls (for tortillas, etc.) I do what my mom and my aunts did. They always covered their dough using a dish towel across the top of the Tupperware container that had the dough.
(My mom sometimes used a slightly wet towel.) They, then let the dough rest for under half an hour. The towel didn’t touch the dough.
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I used to make my own crust, though not especially well. One time I tried Pillsbury, and my husband commented that he liked it just as well. Ha, don’t think I’ve made another homemade crust since then.
I do have an apple ricotta pie recipe that uses grapenuts as the first layer. The apple from turn them into an interesting moist bottom crust. Top layer is cheesecake-ish. I make it more than traditional apple pie. And I never make apple pie with top crust - it’s always my mother’s dutch apple crumb topping.
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My crust and apple pie recipe come from the red and white checked cookbook that many people seem to own. I will not claim that I make the best apple pie, but I will claim that I make the best looking apple pie :). I use ice water when doing the crust, but I don’t think I make the best crust.
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My mom is quite a baker but has decided the same … she says since the store bought crust and her crust are basically indistinguishable she’s not messing with homemade anymore. She’d rather crank out 6 or 8 pies with store bought crust than make 1 with homemade crust in the same amount of time.
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I will confess to use Trader Joe’s or Pillsbury crust from time to time. Especially around holidays when I’m doing a lot of baking.
And to make the best apple pie. Use underripe apples. They’re tart, hold their shape when baked and have lots of pectin. When I lived in my house with 2 apple trees in the back yard, people would always compliment me on my pies and ask what kind of apples I used. I always said “green” because we had 2 different apple varieties of sweet red apples but as long as the apples weren’t fully ripe both made great pies.
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