Nutritarianism

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Whole Wheat Pie Crust


As promised, I offer you my new favourite pie crust recipe. I hadn't made pie crust in like forever! For eons I've bought frozen pie shells in the aluminum pie plates. Since that's no longer an option for one who's eating for health and not convenience, this means baking my own.

Was it always this easy to make a pie crust?



The original recipe can be found here:

Giddy Gabby's Single 9" Whole Wheat Pastry Shell Recipe

Here is my adapted version:

Whole Wheat Pie Crust

***Chill your mixing bowl and pastry cutter.***

This is for one single unbaked pie shell.

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup unbleached white flour
2 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Flavour Stick
3-5 Tbsp. almond, rice, soy, or hemp milk (I used 3 Tbsp)

Combine the flours, sugar and salt. Slice cold Earth Balance stick into flour and cut in well with a pastry blender until smallest pieces are the size of peas.

Using 1 Tbsp at a time, sprinkle cold non-dairy milk and cut in. Continue adding more milk until it's just moist enough to stick together.

Using just your finger tips (this avoids transferring heat from you palms), quickly form a ball.

Lay out a large piece of wax or parchment paper onto the counter and sprinkle with flour. Take your ball of pastry and roll it out until about 1/8" thick.

To transfer the dough, roll up the dough onto the rolling pin, then let it unfold off of the rolling pin into the pie pan.

Gently pat and push into place. Work the edge by pinching it to give it a fluted edge*.

*I didn't use this site, but it looks like a great place for ideas: Decorative Pie Crust Edges.

I didn't do anything further to the crust. I didn't actually need the crust until the next day, so I placed it in a large freezer bag, sealed it shut with a twist tie, and put it the fridge. It worked beautifully for my Festive Chickpea Tart.

4 comments:

  1. I love that you posted this. I like to make as much as I can from scratch as possible. And, I'm like you - before, when I bought most of my things premade, I thought baking from scratch was such an ordeal. But, now, I make things so regularly, sometimes on a daily basis, that it doesn't seem like much work at all anymore. So, I noticed you put sugar in the crust but put a savory filling in - did that work out well? Was the crust sweet, was it made for desserts or to be an all-purpose crust? Thanks!

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  2. Yes, I'm really quite surprised at how easy it is to make stuff from scratch even on a daily basis. You can have fresh healthy food and it's CHEAPER!

    The crust does not taste sweet at all, not in the slightest. I think it would be perfect for any kind of pie, savory or sweet! :)

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  3. That's beautiful! You really nailed the pinch

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  4. I just discovered this page and had to take a minute to thank you for crediting my whole wheat pie crust recipe and providing a link to my page. Your vegan version looks absolutely delicious.

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