Chess Pie made with basic pie crust recipe.
Basic pie crust is a simple and straightforward recipe found in a cookbook by Gerald Ramsey, chef in the tea room at Southern Methodist University when my parents worked there many decades ago. It’s a good starting point if you are intimidated by pie. Makes 1 crust for 9″ pie.
Ingredients:
2 c all purpose flour
1 t Kosher salt
¾ c butter or lard*, frozen and cut into ½ inch cubes
1/3 c ice water
Method: If you are going to bake the crust before filling, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Sift** flour and salt together. Cut shortening into it until the mixture feels like coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle water over dough while you knead with your hand; add only enough water to make a cohesive mass***. Roll into a circle on lightly floured board to a diameter about 3 inches wider than your pie pan, or a little wider if you are going to add a top crust.
If you are going to bake your crust before filling (recommended for fruit pies, not for Mom’s Chess Pie) dump a cup of dried beans into the pan atop the raw crust and bake in 400 degree oven for 12-15 minutes until light brown. Remove the beans (which can be cooked on their own or reused), then add filling and bake according to your recipe.
*Ramsey’s original recipe used Crisco®, of course, You cannot go wrong with butter, but also consider lard or coconut oil. The fat needs to be solid to sift and integrate, so liquid shortening won’t work.
**Does anyone sift flour anymore? Or has improved product uniformity made sifting obsolete?
***Okay, I lied about “simple” because a good result is all in the technique. There are no leavenings or eggs in a pie crust. Success is in how you intermix flour and butter into a form that will bake into a crisp, rich crust. A few tips:
–Everything has to be COLD because melted shortening spells disaster. Keep that in mind as you study the steps above.
–Cutting the shortening means you are coating the little pieces of solid fat with flour then working them till the fat is fully incorporated in the flour, like coarse cornmeal.
–If you start rolling out your first pie crust and see it’s full of big spots of fat that was not fully incorporated, good news! You can cut your pie crust into strips and bake them as cookies while you start over with colder ingredients and a finer mix.
–To get the pie crust into the pie pan, invert the pan over the rolled out dough and flip, supporting the dough with your hand. Gently press the crust into the pan to coat the bottom evenly (no need to pre-oil the pan because the dough already has plenty of fat). Cut edges just beyond the edge of pie pan then make a decorative finish with a fork or your fingers. Bake the extra dough as a separate treat, use it to make a top crust on a fruit pie, or just press into the bottom of the pie pan for a thicker crust.
