Introduction: DIY Homemade Strawberry Pie

Through out the years homemade baking has been lost; people now a days go out to the market and buy everything frozen and ready to bake. Well it's time for that to change, and you're going to help out by making your very own homemade pie! Pie? Yes, PIE! Have you ever heard the saying, "Easy as Pie" or when people say, "I like Pie", I can bet you that over 95% of those people don't know how to make "Pie".To make this you'll need a few ingredients, that's if you have baked or cooked, you should have at home. Here is a list of the few things you'll need.
- 2 Cups (240 grams) of All Purpose Flour
- 2 tsp of Salt
- 1 cup (64 grams) of Sugar
- 8oz (227 grams) of Unsalted chilled butter
- 5oz (140mL) of cold water
- Egg Whites
- Strawberries

That's all you need. Probably the most you'll need to buy would be the butter. Lets move on and make the actual pie.
* You need extra flour for later when knitting the dough*

Step 1: Getting Started

To start off you're going to need something that's called time. This is going to take about an 1 hour of your life, but the end result is priceless! The first thing we are going to do is the filling. The filling takes up most of the time. Then we'll do the crust, yummy, homemade crust! After that we'll make everything come together, bake, and eat!

Quick side note: You're going to do enough crust to bake two pies, that way next time you bake a pie, it'll take half the time!

Step 2: Filling!

You can fill your Pie with anything you desire, but today we are going to fill it with delicious strawberries! The next one you'll choose the filling yourself. :-)
First off you'll need twenty strawberries! Oh, and you also need sugar, lots of sugar!
Here's a list of all the things you'll need to prepare the strawberries.
- Pick out your favorite ones
- Take the head off
- Wash them
- Cut them into thin slices
After that's done, simply grab a medium size bowl, cover the bottom with sugar, and add a layer of strawberries. Add another layer of sugar, and add the second layer of strawberries. Repeat these steps until you run out of strawberries. Be sure to cover the top layer with sugar, place in the fridge for half an hour. You're not going to use all of the sugar, you'll have some left over.

**Be sure to save a 1 tsp of sugar for the next step.

DONE!

Step 3: The Crust

To make the crust cut the chilled butter into cubes; set aside. Gather all the dry ingredients flour, salt, sugar and mix them together. Place the cubes into the flour, we want to incorporate the butter completely into the flour. The best way to do this is to crush the butter with your hands, and keep on mixing until it looks like you’d never had added the butter. Once this is completely slowly add the water. Noticed I pointed out slowly, you're not going to use all of your water. Simply add a little, mix, add a little more and mix. Keep it going until you have a nice looking, not sticky dough. Wrap your dough in plastic wrap, and place it in the fridge next to your strawberries.

Almost done!

Step 4: The Rolling!

Heat your oven up to 350ºF, preheating it for 10 minutes. Once your oven is ready, take the dough out, it should of gotten a bit stiff. Cut into four equal pieces, and put two of them back into the fridge for another pie. Place one of two remaining pieces onto a nicely floured surface, and start flatting with a rolling pin that's also dusted with flour so the dough doesn't stick. Make the dough about 2mm thick, and cut with a knife a circle on the dough that is about 3 centimeters bigger then your pan. Repeat this step with the second piece of dough.
**Depending on your pan size is how big you want your dough to be, in my case, my wasn't very deep, so I only added few extra centimeter.**

Lets Finish THIS!

Step 5: Lets Finish This Pie!

Butter your pan slightly, and cover with a thin layer of flour all the around the pan. Place one of the circles onto the pan, and pour the filling in. The top of the pie can be either weaved, or simply placed on top, and cut four small opening on the center. To weave cut the remaining circle into ten even strips, place five vertical, and the other five horizontally on top of the pie. To make it look a bit nicer, you can use the over, under technique. To make the edges press down all around with a fork. Finally, use the egg whites to lightly cover the top of the pie, us a brush preferably. This helps it gets that nice brown look on top when it bakes. The final step to victory is placing your pie in the oven for 35-45 min.

Step 6: Time to EAT! + Tips

Once it's done let it go back to where it all started, the fridge, and cool for 10 minutes. After, go show it off to your family and friends!
TIPS for a better Pie!
Want your Pie to stand out, and look and taste more awesome (if you can taste awesome?) then any other pie around you?!

- Lightly cover the top of your pie with egg white, use a napkin, or a brush.
- Overall tip for your dough, don't throw it out because it hardened in the fridge! That's one of the symptoms this dough has, just leave it out for 5 minutes before using.
- Extra tip that goes along with the one above, warn the others in your house! Believe me! The worst thing that can happen is you get home, all ready to make a pie, and you find out they threw it away because it was, "Hard as a rock!"
- The dough can be stored in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.
- Be sure your butter is very cold, you don't want it to melt while your crushing it and mixing it with the dough.
- The over hangs of the top layer, don't cut those! Tuck them in like you see in the second picture above. The right one is tucked in, the left one isn't!
- Keep an eye on your Pie while baking it, you don't want to over bake it, or not bake at all.
- Don't try to remove the Pie from the pan when it just came out of the oven! Wait till it cools in the fridge, then carefully between two humans, one grabs the pan the other the edge of the pie, and carefully spin the pie to loosen it up.

Thanks for reading my inscrutable, and I hope you have a happy Pie Day!

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