Page 24 - Pie It Forward: Pies, Tarts, Tortes, Galettes, and Other Pastries Reinvented

Pie weights: When blind baking a pie or tart crust, weighing
down the dough when it first starts baking is an essential step on

the way to a beautiful finished product. You can use dried beans

or uncooked rice as a weight, but I’m a huge fan of ceramic pie

weights. First, unlike dried beans, they don’t get smellier the

more you bake them. Second, you can clean them easily. Third,
their round shape is perfect for fitting into sharp corners (like

when you’re making a rectangular tart), so you can keep the

shape of the crust uniform. I buy four packs of weights at a time:

One pack alone usually isn’t enough for a single shell. I also like

to fill the entire shell, not just line the bottom. I do this to prevent
the sides of the crust from slouching down, which can happen

with delicate doughs. That requires extra weights, so you might

as well have them on hand.

Tart forms, flan forms, Pyrex pie plates: Pies can take any
number of shapes. They can be large or tiny. They can be made

in glass pie plates or in metal tart forms. Unless you are a

professional pastry chef, sometimes it’s a mystery to home

bakers what to use for certain tarts or pies. For instance, my

favorite tool for making tarts is a flan ring. It’s a bottomless, thin
metal ring that might look useless to a home cook unfamiliar with

its purpose. Actually, it’s the standard form used in French

bakeries for most tarts. But how the heck are you supposed to

know that when the darn thing is called a FLAN ring and not a

tart ring or a pie mold? I’ll give you ideas, resources, and the

right names for the different shapes my pies and tarts will take.
Your pie world will open up. I promise.