November 26th, 2020

elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
Thursday, November 26th, 2020 07:14 am
I've been reading your posts while curled up under the blanket on my phone. It's not conducive to leaving comments.

I'm making pie crust from scratch and have tried to mise en place: i somehow left out 20% of the flour needed in the crust. Fortunately i was blind baking the shell yesterday and not planning on doing the pie until today. The crust went into the oven -- fortunately i hadn't bothered to make a beautiful crimp -- and came out half way through the baking completely slumped down the sides with pools of melted butter at the bottom. After realizing i'd measured two cups not two and a half cups of flour a couple days ago, i sprinkled flour in the pools of melted butter, hoping it will be not terrible. I'm worried that, while gorgeous looking as flaky crust, the crust is actually some tough polymer that will break teeth.

At least a nice juicy apple pie will be baking on that surface and maybe will balance out infelicities -- but what about the top? So, this morning i took my already rolled out sheet. I painted half with ice water, and sprinkled some flour on that. Folded. Paint half with water, sprinkle flour, fold. I think i made three folds and then tried to carefully shape it into an Echo Dot sized lump. I rolled it out again between parchment paper (A++ technique! Would recommend. Start rolling from the middle) and put it back in the fridge for a bit. Hopefully, the fact that i had shredded the butter and barely worked the dough originally will mean the gluten development stays low.

I remember making croissants my senior year of high school and the constant return of the dough to the freezer to try and make the layers. Have i made croissant crust?

--== ∞ ==--

So -- i had about 40% more apples than could fit in the crust, even carefully fitting the slices in a spiral so it would be packed full. So i made a second pie with a Pillsbury crust from the freezer. I really don't understand why there was too many apples. I weighed the apples! I dunno. Anyhow, two pies isn't bad.

The home made crust pie came out with apple juices bubbling around between pie pan and crust. We'll see how crisp that turns out. The second pie i didn't want to bother with blind baking the bottom and discovered i'd preheated the oven with a pizza stone in it. A quick check of the internet hinted that putting the pie on the stone was particularly useful with pies where one risks a soggy bottom. Great! And it looks pretty good, so that's nice. Now i have to WAAAAIIIITTTT to taste how it all turned out.

We are meeting up with my sister's family and my parents for an out door pie eating on this somewhat gloomy day in a few hours.

--== ∞ ==--

In other news, watching Fellowship of the Ring with Christine and finding myself more picky about special effects.

After finding out about the three color code for our counties in North Carolina, we received emergency messages on our cell phones to alert us that the county is now "orange." Oh well, it was nice to feel that things might not be that terrible for a few days.



* Christine sat with me as i watched four of five YouTube videos on rolling out dough. One chef advised a hockey puck shape and size. Christine repeated back the instruction replacing the comparison with an Echo Dot. I nodded, i'd understand THAT instruction but needed the video to explain what a hockey puck size was. "The Echo Dot is Amazon's diminutive, hockey puck-sized Alexa device." "I opted for the Echo “Dot” which, being from North Dakota, I can say looks very similar to a hockey puck with cool “Tron” lights ..." We, being from North Carolina, have far more experience with the Echo Dot we got a year ago than with hockey pucks.