The Pie Crust

My wife seldom or never reads this stuff, and usually my daughters don’t either. They hate my writing it, and wish I didn’t speak or write, unless spoken to. This is my lot in life and while I don’t understand it, I live with it. As a communicator by nature, I could really care less, because I will continue. However, there are a few stories I start to tell my wife which she immediately tells me I can’t say, usually because she feels it would embarrass someone somewhere. I generally don’t care about it, and enjoy the challenge.


This is one of those I guess, but I can’t imagine this embarrassing anyone, it’s just sort of funny. I will leave out all names and references, and the person I’m writing about will recognize herself immediately and find it funny.

I had a call on the weekend asking if either my wife or daughter were home. The caller, when asked, needed baking advice and wanted to speak to the bakers. I explained that they both were out and asked if I could help. I was baking and cooking before my wife was born, but this seems to be lost on most people. I do know how to do stuff, even though I’m seldom called upon to do it.

She was baking a pie shell and wanted to know if she should prebake and if it was OK to use rice as she had no dry beans. I thought she could, although I’d never done that myself and she thanked me. I made many assumptions, as did she.

She assumed I knew nothing!

I assumed she knew something!

In this there is a world of difference.

She made the pie crust with rice as a weight but failed to realize that one must put something on the wet pie crust first before you put in the weights, or you will bake the weights into the pie! She poured the rice onto the wet pie shell and baked! She made a “hard rice pie”.

Prebaking a pie or tart crust is done so that you partially or completely bake before it is filled. This is done to help keep the crust from becoming soggy from a wet fruit filling, or so that you have a cooked crust if you are filling the pie with something already cooked, such as custard.

To prebake a crust, you roll it out and put it in the pan. To keep the bottom from puffing and the sides from falling, you should line the crust with parchment paper or aluminum foil, with holes poked in it. Fill it with beans or rice. There are also special pie weights on the market.

Make sure to gently push the beans or rice up against the sides of the parchment or foil to keep the sides of the crust from collapsing in the heat of the oven. Place the crust in a hot oven (say, 425°F; 220°C), which will help set the flour in the sides before the fat starts to soften, and bake for 20 minutes. Carefully remove the weights and liner from the crust, prick the bottom with the tines of a fork to allow steam to escape, and return the crust to the oven.

If you are prebaking the crust, it may only need another 5 minutes in the oven, until it is a very light brown. If you want to fully bake the crust, it may need 10 to 20 minutes more baking until it is done. You may also have to prick the bottom again.

Now, having done all this prebaking, you also must take care if you're subsequently going to add a filling and bake some more, that you don't overcook the edges of the crust that you so magnificently crimped or fluted or otherwise decorated. You can buy a pie crust shield, or if you're a master of aluminum-foil origami, you can make your own.

Remove the beans, rice, aluminum foil, parchment paper, metal weights and anything else before you put in the pie filling!