Tri-PiE-Day Experiment

The stage was set for a pie the likes of which I have never seen. The combination of two of my favorite places on the web got my mind wheels spinning and the ideas began pouring out. It only took minutes to realize that this pie was going to be made to excess using completely over the top ideas and technology. The project spanned days, caused frustration, and produced a whole lot of Pie. After hours of researching and deciding on a course of action a plan was in place. What I ended up with was a pie with a stenciled crust cut by an automated cutter and three separate pie fillings all encased on one pie shell their flavors separated even though they were baked together.

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Step 1: Pie Dough

The first part to tackle was the dough. Not having baked many pies in the past I decided to do some research on the differences between butter and shortening before coming to a decision on what type to use. The conclusions I drew from my research were that both doughs offer a melt in your mouth texture, but that butter based doughs offer more flavor and bring flakiness into the texture of the dough.

The Ingredients:
   1 1/4 cups flour
   1/4 tsp salt
   1/2 cup unsalted butter(1 stick) cold and cubed
   1/4 cup iced water
   A food processor (it makes things really easy)

The process:
1) Put the flour, salt, and cubed butter into the food processor and pulse the ingredients till the ingredients form the consistency of   wet sand.
2) Turn the food processor on and slowly pour in the ice water till the everything comes together and forms a ball. Immediately stop the food processor.
3) Remove the dough from the food processor, form into a ball by hand, place onto a flour dusted rolling surface, and roll our to approximately 1/8 of an inch thick.

Note: this recipe is enough dough to fill a pie shell. In order to top the pie you will have to make an additional batch for the top as I had to do. ( or make a crumb topping as I did for the extra pie I made.)