Perfect Pies: Tips for Making Pies from Scratch

Do you make your pies from scratch? Making the crust and figuring out the filling can feel pretty overwhelming if you're not in the habit. Before you give in to holiday pressure and pick up a store-bought crust, take a look at our helpful tips for making pies yourself!

If the idea of making your own crust fills you to the brim with fear, we wholeheartedly recommend starting with the Vodka Pie Crust from Cook's Illustrated. This crust makes use of the food processor and uses a few tablespoons of vodka to ensure a soft flaky crust, every time. It is nearly impossible to overwork this dough!

The only trick with this crust is that it starts to soften really quickly, sometimes making it difficult to roll out or transfer to the pie pan in one piece. Just be patient and stick it back in the fridge for a few minutes if you notice this happening.

• Recipe Review: The Cook's Illustrated Vodka Pie Crust
• How to Make a Pie Crust - A step-by-step illustrated guide through the process

When you've mastered that one, take a look at our recipe and instructions for basic traditional pie crust:

• Recipe: Basic Pie Crust

You can also branch out with one of these recipes:

• Sour Cream Pie Crust
• Graham Cracker Pie Crust

Once you have your crust made, there are a few things you can do:

• Two Ways to Transfer Pie Dough
• How and When to Dock a Pie Crust
• How and When to Use Pie Weights
• Use a Spill Tray to Catch Drips
• Top-Only Pie Crust of Overlapping Shapes

After the crust, making the filling is the easy part! Just in case you need it, here's some inspiration for your holiday pies:

• How to Make an Easy Fruit Filling for Pie
• The Kitchn's Best Pie Bakeoff - 2008
• A Dozen Pies for Pie Day
• Six Unconventional Thanksgiving Pies

What other bits of advice or inspiration do you have to share about baking pie from scratch?

(Images: Faith Durand)

Comments (11)

Don't forget to mention rolling out the dough in rice flour. One of the previous Kitchen posts pointed out that the dough won't stick to the counter when it's rolled in rice flour. Neat advice!

I read a great tip in a cookbook from Laura Calder: when a recipe has you blind bake a crust, you need to fill it with weights all the way up the sides, not just to cover the bottom. The weights help prevent the crust shrinking and collapsing on itself, and if you don't protect the sides, they're likely to shrink and fall over. Which is exactly what my quiche crusts always used to do, because I didn't know to fill the pan all the way up the sides!

speaking of pie weights...i've always wondered if you use dried beans or rice when blind baking, do you need to throw them out afterwards, or would they still be cook up okay after being in the oven? i guess i could just keep some aside for this purpose, but i've always wondered and have never gotten around to testing it out.

I do grab store-bought crusts because I'm cooking in someone else's kitchen and things I take for granted like a food processor are just not available. Its sad but I end up making the simplest desserts for the biggest holidays and the fanciest stuff for everyday.

Tip #1- You must first invent the universe

I have been having a nightmare of a time with blind baking. My crusts always shrink and the sides slide down into the bottom of the pan. I've put pie weights in, I've put the crust in the freezer for 20 minutes before baking, everything and it always shrinks. Any tips?
I see someone suggested putting weights up the sides but does that mean filling the entire pan up with weights?

rachpie, it's my understanding that you aren't supposed to cook and eat them after they've been used as pie weights (maybe because they dry out more in the oven? beans that are very old and dry don't soften when you cook them). I keep my pie weight beans in one of those oven baking bags and just reuse them over and over. I'd hate to waste them every time.

Damfino, thanks for the Carl Sagan reference. Love that man! :)

@Nikita - Yes, try filling the entire pan with pie weights, all the way up the sides. You might also be overworking the dough and forming too much gluten (this would also make the crust tough). Try handling it as little as possible, or use a low-protein flour like cake or pastry flour.

Also, Shirley O'Corriher, she of baking wisdom, suggests pressing some extra dough down the sides of a pie that will be blind-baked to account for the shrinkage. I'm not really sure how one does that though?!

I make a couple of pie crusts at a time and then freeze them. They go straight from the freezer into the over for pre-baking and it never shrinks.

If your crusts do shrink, then keep some dough aside and fill in the cracks later on.

A fool-proof alternative is to let the dough hang over the sides and then after pre- and normal baking, then trim them when the pie has cooled (if you want to be tidy).

But the main thing is indeed not to overwork the dough.

My mother gave me a recipe for no-roll pie crust which is effing awesome, easy, and appears to be impossible to screw up! Screw your rolling, I'll take my patted-out-with-fingertips crust.

Love the photo on your sight. I made the crust, my first time making pie crust, didn't get it perfect but it still turn out well. Thanks.