Cornmeal Crust -Savoury

My mom’s pies were beyond compare. Lemon meringue. Apple. Strawberry. No one baked a pie as tender and flaky as hers. We probably took them for granted, but I remember her delight when she won the apple pie contest held at the girls’ high school. Pies may even have shaped her destiny. When she was 17, she worked at the bowling alley on White Avenue in Edmonton. She baked the pies there and one fateful day my dad came and ordered a slice. Possibly coconut cream pie. The rest, as they say, is history.

She was happy to pass on her pie-making ability to Laura who insists that the secret is “following the recipe, using ice cold water, and not touching the dough too much with warm hands.”

In fact when Laura gave me the recipe, she said I had to stress that the first step is to put a glass of water in the freezer and get it good and cold. Mom used to put ice cubes in her water. Whichever method you choose, just make sure the water is cold and you don’t over-handle the dough.

This savoury crust gets a real boost in flavour and texture from the 10% cornmeal. We had it with the lentil sausage quiche, but it would work for any savoury recipe.

*You'll need a kitchen scale for this European recipe.

Cornmeal Crust

180 g flour 
20 g cornmeal
50 ml ice cold, really really cold water. Really.
1/2 tsp salt
100 g cold butter, cubed
One egg yolk
Butter for greasing pan

Makes one crust for a regular sized pie plate (11 in. or 28 cm) plus
one small pie plate.

Mix together flour, cornmeal and salt.
Add butter, egg yolk and 50 ml of ice cold water. Mix together until smooth using a pastry cutter.
Form into a ball and refrigerate 30 minutes or longer.
Roll out and place in greased pie plate.
Poke dough with fork tines.
Cover with parchment paper and pie weights.
Bake until golden brown 25-30 minutes @ 200 degrees C 

Best crust ever.

Roll out the dough.
Starting from the centre of the circle each time, roll outwards with even pressure to 12 o'clock, 6 o'clock, 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock to create uniformly thick circle shape.

When the dough is rolled out, gently fold in half and place on pie plate using large spatula to help lift it.

Ease the pie dough into the plate - don't stretch it. Stretching it as you place it in the pan will increase the amount of shrinkage.  Patch any mistakes at this point. (If necessary take a piece of extra dough from the overlap and place in areas where there are gaps. Rub cold water (with your finger) on the section that needs patching to help the two pieces of dough stick together.

I used kitchen shears to trim the dough to be 1/2" bigger than pie plate. Then I  folded the extra dough under to make it look pretty.

Using the tines of a fork, poke holes in the dough before baking. This is called "docking" and will help prevent bubbles from forming underneath.

Pie weights also keep the dough flat on the bottom of the pan. Cover the dough with parchment paper and use rice or beans as pie weights. Save the rice or beans to use as pie weights again, but they won't be good to eat any more after their stint in the oven.