Lisa Ludwinski
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You are listening to She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from Rhe Cherry Bombe podcast network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer, and author of three baking books, including my latest, “Snackable Bakes.” Each Saturday, I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around, and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes.
We're taking a little break, so for today's show, we're dipping into the archives for my interview with Lisa Ludwinski. As some of you may know, Lisa is the owner and baker behind Sister Pie, the celebrated bakery in Detroit. She's also the author of “Sister Pie” the cookbook, and she and I take a deep dive into her pie dough recipe. If you're baking tarts and pies this fall, you don't want to miss my chat with Lisa.
Today's episode is presented by California Prunes. I'm a California Prunes fan when it comes to smart snacking and baking. First off, California prunes are good for your gut, your heart, and even your bones. Prunes contain dietary fiber and other nutrients to support good gut health, potassium to support heart health, and Vitamin K, copper, and antioxidants to support healthy bones. And of course, prunes are a great addition to scones, cakes, and crackers. Anything you are baking that calls for dried fruit, consider California prunes. Prunes work perfectly in recipes with rich and complex flavors like espresso, olives, and chilies, and they enhance the flavor of warm spices, toffee, caramel, and chocolate. If you love baking swaps and experimenting with natural sweeteners, you can replace some of the sugar in a recipe with California prune puree. Prune puree is a cinch to make, as it's a blend of prunes and water. You can find more details on the California Prunes website, californiaprunes.org. While you're there, be sure to check out all the delicious recipes, including the Salty Snack Chocolate Fudge with pretzels and California prunes, inspired by the recipe from my cookbook, “Snackable Bakes.” Happy baking and happy snacking.
Let's check in with today's guest, Lisa Ludwinski. Hello.
Lisa Ludwinski:
Hi.
Jessie Sheehan:
So excited to be here with you today. First, I want you to tell us about your path, how baking became your thing. You definitely need to tell the peeps about your food videos, honey, from way back. You started the movement. Now, that's what everybody does, kitchen videos.
Lisa Ludwinski:
I was doing theater in college and moved to New York to pursue that. I wanted to be a director, which wasn't the easiest thing to try, and just figure out, as a 22-year-old, also trying to figure out how to live in New York, so I kind of got distracted by food. It was around the same time when food blogs were becoming really popular, like Smitten Kitchen had just started. This was back in 2006, 2007.
And so, I spent every moment when I wasn't working one of three jobs, just looking at food blogs and wishing that I was making things. And so, I thought, I could combine my interest and passion for theater and film and performance with my new curiosity for cooking and baking. And I started filming a show called, Funny Side Up, on YouTube. Every week, I would make a new recipe that I had never made before, and it would be the first time I was trying it, so it was very much lighthearted, and many mistakes were made, but that was kind of part of the charm, I think. So, I did that for about a hundred episodes.
And after that and lots of hijinks, I decided that I wanted to try and kind of get my feet wet in the professional side of things, and so that's when I worked at Milk Bar. I worked there for two years. I worked behind the counter. I worked at several of their locations, and then I ended up spending most of my time at their Brooklyn commissary, being a baker. And that was super cool to not only be able to learn a lot about baking, on a larger scale, but to also kind of be witness to a young business, and its growth, and the decisions that they were making about its growth.
And then, I also worked for a summer at Four & Twenty Blackbirds, and that was actually right before I moved to Michigan, because in 2010 or 11, I did an internship in Detroit, at Avalon International Breads and Zingerman's Bakehouse, learning about bread making, and also learning about businesses with triple bottom line missions, people that are focused on people, planet and profit in their business vision.
Fast forward two years, I moved back to Michigan and started Sister Pie out of my parents' kitchen in November of 2012. And after a year of doing that, I actually started baking out of a commercial kitchen in Detroit, which is actually in the building that I'm in right now.
Jessie Sheehan:
Amazing.
Lisa Ludwinski:
Which is so weird and-
Jessie Sheehan:
Full cycle.
Lisa Ludwinski:
Yeah, this recording studio, I think, opened in the past couple of years here, which is so cool. And so, coming into this building was kind of a little walk down memory lane.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll be right back.
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everybody, I'm Kerry Diamond, the founder of Cherry Bombe, and the editor-in-chief of Cherry Bombe Magazine. If you are looking for the newest issue of Cherry Bombe, be sure to visit one of our amazing stockists. Cherry Bombe is carried by great bookstores, cafes, magazine shops, and culinary boutiques across the country and abroad. Places like Back in the Day Bakery in Savannah, Good Cakes and Bakes in Detroit, and Le Dix-Sept Patisserie in San Francisco. Visit cherrybombe.com for stockist near you.
Jessie Sheehan:
I want to do a deep dive into Sister Pie's all butter pie dough recipe. And I feel like this is absolutely perfect because Thanksgiving is almost upon us, and peeps might be thinking about switching up their pie dough recipe this year, or maybe they just don't have a go-to pie dough recipe and they need one.
In your book, you write, our basic pie dough is a pure and simple ode to unsalted butter and all-purpose flour. And I love that because it's simple, simple for the win. So, I want to go through the ingredients you use, the tools you like, the assembly, so peeps can just understand all about this recipe.
So, first things first, I want to go through the ingredients. Now, I know it's all-purpose flour, wondering if there was an R&D period of time where you were trying pastry flour or some of the other flours that people are throwing into pie, or you've always been an all-purpose gal?
Lisa Ludwinski:
I've always been an all-purpose gal for the pie dough, but I would say that, especially early on, and you'll see it in some of the recipes in the cookbook and even some of the things we do now, I was actually always very interested in combining all-purpose flour with another flour, like whole wheat or rye or buckwheat. But for the basic recipe, I just stuck with all-purpose, and that was probably just because I didn't really have experience with pastry flour or anything, so it was kind of like, if it's not broke, don't fix it.
Jessie Sheehan:
A hundred percent agree with that. And then, sugar, you use just a tiny bit in the recipe. And I wonder, can you tell peeps what sugar does to a pie dough recipe?
Lisa Ludwinski:
The sugar and the salt are really what I consider to be the seasoning in the pie dough. So, it just brings a hint of sweetness and a hint of... Well, the salt is more balancing, but-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep.
Lisa Ludwinski:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Nice. And then, now, the genius piece of the pie dough, of the Sister Pie pie dough recipe, your genius liquid. Usually, when you have a pie dough recipe, you're going to have flour, you're going to have butter, maybe you're going to have a little bit of sugar, you're going to have salt, and then you're going to have some kind of liquid. And often, it's a cold liquid. Sometimes, it has a little vodka, sometimes it has a little vinegar. But Lisa has a really cool way of setting up that liquid for you and what you should be looking for, because it's hard. Peeps probably know from trying to make pie dough, like getting cold water into your pie dough. Anyway, there are lots of pitfalls, and Lisa has a really cool way of getting that liquid together. Could you walk us through it?
Lisa Ludwinski:
I can, yeah. But this is another moment where I can't take credit for this very cool trick. It was something that I learned at Four & Twenty Blackbirds, because when you're making pie dough in bulk, you have to have a lot of cold water. And so, at Four & Twenty Blackbirds, they would take a measuring cup, like a liquid measuring cup, like a steel one, and they would fill it up with a little bit of water, and then freeze it. And then, once it came time to make the pie dough, you would take out the cup, fill it with water, and then add some apple cider vinegar. And so, I learned that fully from Four & Twenty Blackbirds, and it was such a genius trick because you wouldn't have the ice cubes falling into the bowl, it was much easier to measure it. You could be sure that the water would be cold. Whereas, when I used to do it, I would make the ice cup of water right when I needed it, and so it was kind of pointless. The ice didn't actually chill the water.
So, that was something that, I think, when we teach the pie classes, I say that it's helpful to freeze the water that way, so that you have the solid ice chunk to chill it. It's not super necessary. I think it's especially helpful when you're making a lot of pie dough, which maybe you'd be doing if you're preparing for a big holiday or an event. And so, I like to use that technique at home as well. And then, the apple cider vinegar, I think that's something that's really gotten passed down from baker to baker to baker over the years. And originally, people said that it would inhibit the gluten formation in the dough, which would lead to a flakier, more tender crust.
When I was researching for the cookbook, I wanted to have a quote or something about that, and I couldn't really find any true pie science behind it. But what I like about the apple cider vinegar is that it kind of gives a tangy flavor to the crust, that just sort of elevates it a little bit. Other than that, it's just kind of like a fun pie tradition that we keep on doing. But I really think it's about the flavor, for me, now that I know that. And if it's helping our dough be flakier, great, but I think that the most important elements to flakiness come from other things.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I think tools are a different story because people like to have all different kinds of tools, or maybe they use their hands or they use a food processor when they make pie dough. So, I love hearing about, and I think you guys will, too, about what Lisa likes to use. So, first of all, your bowl. I'm always using a big glass Pyrex, and I love that you guys are all about stainless steel or stainless for keeping things cold.
Lisa Ludwinski:
It helps to keep things cold, for sure, but it also can take a lot of abuse. When we're cutting the butter into the flour, we're first using a bench scraper, and then we're using a pastry blender. And you want to slice through the butter with both of those tools to the bottom of the bowl so you can make sure that every action you're doing is creating a change in the ingredient, so that you're actually slicing through that butter. And so, what ends up happening is, you're kind of hitting the bowl and making a lot of noise. I'd be a little nervous doing that with a glass bowl. So, the stainless steel, like I said, can really handle it. And so, for that reason and the fact that it helps keep things cold, we really enjoy the stainless steel bowl.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then, a pastry blender, which I don't even know if I have, I'm embarrassed to say. Can you talk to us, is it sort of just to avoid the hot hands situation? Or what's so great about a pastry blender? It seems kind of old school and grandmothery in the best way.
Lisa Ludwinski:
Our process is that, we first start with the butter, cube it with the bench scraper in the bowl and coat it in flour, and then use the bench scraper for a little bit longer while rotating the bowl to continue to break down the butter. So, at this point, you're kind of taking the cubes that you've just cut, and maybe slicing them in half with the bench scraper, because if we switch to the pastry blender too soon, the butter would get stuck, because it would still be too big.
But then, we switched to the pastry blender, and they've usually got about four to five blades, and you can utilize this rocking motion. And so, it really covers a lot of ground when you're trying to make pie dough efficiently because you can rock the pastry blender back and forth and you're slicing through several pieces of butter at once, and you just continuously do that all around the bowl, mixing up the ingredients until you're ready to add the liquid. I like it because it definitely avoids your fingers touching the butter, and it does a good job of getting the butter to the texture within the flour, that we want it to be, before adding the liquid, which is basically large chunks of butter that are about the size of peas and pistachios, and then everything else looks like a finely graded Parmesan cheese. It's fun to think about peas and cheese.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep.
Lisa Ludwinski:
I mean, I wish I had some pasta every time I talk about that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, it's also fun to picture... I'm very old, so my 1970s childhood with the green can of Kraft Parmesan-
Lisa Ludwinski:
Yeah, it's that can.
Jessie Sheehan:
That is exactly what you're talking about.
Lisa Ludwinski:
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah. I ate a lot of that, as a child.
I think Good Grips OXO has a good one that I like. It's kind of wider. I like it when they have sort of the grippiness on the handle, because otherwise I feel like my hand slips a little bit. That would be the one I would recommend, off the top of my head.
Jessie Sheehan:
Awesome, thank you. And then, tapered rolling pin. Talk to us about why tapered, as opposed to old school, handled rolling pin.
Lisa Ludwinski:
I've worked with several different rolling pins in my day. I think my favorite two have been... Well, Four & Twenty Blackbirds had one marble rolling pin that we sometimes used, and that was so cool because it kind of did the work for you, and it stayed really cold, and it was really heavy, so it was great at rolling out a really cold piece of dough. But having multiple marble rolling pins isn't really in a bakery budget. We use the tapered end French style, which I actually prefer over anything with handles, because I'm actually kind of touching the same tool that's touching the dough, whereas with the handles, I feel kind of disconnected from what's happening. I can't really intuit if it needs to be rolled out more or less or how thick or thin it is. But with the French style, I'm really close to the dough. I feel super connected to it.
And then, the tapered end really helps because I guess... The rolling pin itself is super light. And then, when you go to roll the edges, you can kind of use the tapered end of it, kind of rested on the table, and be really thoughtful about how much you're rolling out the edges at the beginning, so that you can then focus on rolling out from the center, for the bulk of the rollout, and then at the end, go back, and even it all out. Because I think what people run into a lot is that, because the edges will warm up more quickly and become more malleable, people might over roll the edges, and then you don't have enough dough to crimp. And that's, of course, a huge part of the pies, of the crimp.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we need, pun intended, our hands held as you walk us through the assembly. So, the first thing that I love, and you already talked about it a little bit when we were going through the tools, but I think peeps need to know, we're talking about a steel or a metal bowl, it's got some dry ingredients in it, and then you're putting a literal stick of cold butter in there, no cubing outside of the bowl. That is so amazing. And I know we talked about the bench scraper, but will you just go through that again? Like, literally, cold butter stick in bowl. Love.
Lisa Ludwinski:
Yeah. I mean, really, it's just about efficiency. We're going to cut the butter, either outside of the bowl or inside the bowl. We might as well just cut it inside the bowl and get it coated in flour as we're doing it. And I think with pie dough, for me, at least, every moment that the butter is outside of the fridge, is a moment not to be wasted, because I will step to the side for a second and just say that the reason that we don't want the butter to melt is because we want those chunks of butter to stay intact and not become homogenous with the rest of the ingredients, so that when we put a crust into the oven, it's got these little chunks of butter that are going to burst in the oven when they hit the heat, and that's going to create these flaky layers. So, that's why we're sort of obsessed with keeping things cold, just as a side note.
But going back to the assembly, yeah, we just put the cold butter straight from the fridge in the bowl, coat it in flour, and then cube it. So, if it's a stick, I would quarter it lengthwise, and then cut across half inch cubes, and then break it up with your hands and coat it in flour, before switching back to the bench scraper to cut it up further.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then, from there, you moved to pastry blender to get cheese and peas as it were.
Lisa Ludwinski:
Yep. And so, after I've used the bench scrapper to cut the butter more and really get it incorporated with the flour, I'll switch to the pastry blender. And I like to rotate the bowl, kind of just spin it as I do this. It just kind of helps me... Because then, I can kind of point my pastry blender just at the center of the bowl. I don't have to think too much about what I'm doing. I can kind of go on autopilot. And then, every five or six turns of the bowl, I'll pause, quickly clean out the pastry blender, and then kind of mix the ingredients up with the pastry blender and continue, until I've gotten to peas and cheese.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great. Great. And peas and cheese is when you know it's time for your cold liquid?
Lisa Ludwinski:
Yeah. And I guess, I'm kind of moving into this sort of pea pistachio cheese situation where I want there to be a little bit room for some bigger chunks.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love.
Lisa Ludwinski:
So, that sounds like a great pasta, cheese, pistachio and cheese. I mean, I would love to eat that.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm coming to Detroit to visit you, and we're going to make that pasta together.
Lisa Ludwinski:
Okay. Yeah. So then, once you've gotten to that point, you will add the liquid, and then I like to go back to the bench scraper, big surprise, to just kind of move the ingredients around until you don't see visible pools of the liquid anymore. So, just a little bit. You're just going to kind of hydrate the ingredients, and then you're going to go in with your hands, and that's when you're really going to bring the dough together. And you're basically just scooping up as many of the ingredients as you can from the bottom of the bowl, pressing them back onto themselves, turning the bowl, and just repeating that folding process over and over again, until you have a dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you'll do that in the bowl? Some people, once it's hydrated, they kind of drop that onto a flowered work surface and begin to knead that way. But you're bowl, till the end?
Lisa Ludwinski:
I like the bowl because it kind of gives me something to work against. It's easier to keep track of all those little bits of flour and butter that are flying everywhere. And what I'll do is, right away, you'll start to feel a dough being forms, but also, at the same time, there's all of this flour and butter at the bottom of the bowl.
So, as I'm going, I might also try to scoop that up, give it a squeeze, and then incorporate it into the dough. And you really are... You're right, it does feel like you're kneading it, but the difference that I see is that we're not kneading it at this point because we're just bringing it together. If we were to continue to fold it after all of the ingredients are incorporated and it's a solid dough, then that's when we would be working the dough too much.
So, for a lot of people, when they see me make the dough, they think I'm overworking it, but it's really that I'm just kneading to bring the ingredients together so that they're one mass of dough. And then, at that point, that's when I stick it in the fridge.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. Right. And talk to us about your wrapping. Are you doing plastic wrap or are you doing a ziplock bag? Are you doing tinfoil? Talk to us about how you wrap that dough.
Lisa Ludwinski:
We currently wrap it in plastic wrap. If we are making multiple rounds, we'll put a little bit of flour in between. I'm really looking forward to the day when we can maximize our planet, bottom line more, and think about some alternatives to wrapping it in plastic, because that's one of our biggest plastic uses, is just wrapping pie dough. Until that's figured out, that's what we do and recommend you do at home.
Jessie Sheehan:
This is a problem with my pie dough frequently is, I have tiny little cracks around the edges, and I sometimes will wrap in plastic wrap, and either try to massage the cracks out while it's already wrapped in plastic wrap or I assume, "Oh, it's okay. After it chills and I bring it back out, I'll fix it." But I love that you say... I think you say, you kind of almost kneading together the little cracks with your fingertips, before you're even wrapping it in plastic. Is that right?
Lisa Ludwinski:
Once the dough is formed and I kind of portion it out, I will take my little ball of dough and kind of flatten it between my fingers, and then I'll set it on the counter and kind of round it off with my hands. And at that point, if I see that there are big cracks on the edges, I'll just kind of push them together like working with clay or something.
But you're right, even if you just wrap it with a couple of cracks, it will be okay, once you take the dough out. You can do that same thing and piece the cracks together at any point during the rollout process, and it will be fine.
And another thing you can do, actually, when you're doing the rollout, because we always start with banging the dough a little bit to both bring up the temperature, to make it easier to work with, but also to start the flattening process. And so, if, at that point, you sort of bang the dough and you get it to be about between a half inch and an inch thick, if you see the big cracks, what I like to do is just turn the dough on its side and roll it across the counter, and sort of seal the cracks up that way. So, that would be a step you could do if it randomly cracked after it rests in the fridge. The banging just helps flatten it a little bit to make it kind of more approachable for the next steps.
Yeah. I think, sometimes, people would take pie dough out and leave it on the counter for 20 minutes to let it kind of warm up, but you really don't want to do that because what if 20 minutes becomes 30, and then your butter's getting all melty, and it's going to be really tough to roll something like that out. And so, this way, we, at least, are kind of in control of the temperature changes.
When we teach it in the pie class, I break it down into four steps. Step one is the banging. Step two is kind of rolling out just the edges, like I talked about, with the tapered. And then, step three is, really, when you're going to probably use the most of your muscle to roll out from the center all the way up to the top, but stopping about a half inch before the edge since you already worked on that, and then continuously rotating the dough, roll from the center. So, at this point, you're kind of getting it to the larger size. And then, once it seems as though the center is now kind of maybe thinner than the edges, that's when I kind of take a deep breath, step down from my tiptoes, and work on just rolling it out to 13 inches, eighth of an inch thickness across.
And so, at that point, I usually end up having to go back over the edges because they've remained a little bit thick. And so, that's kind of like the finishing step before you trim it and put it in the pie pan.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. Two things. First of all, I love the tip toe tip. For those that don't have Lisa's book, the tip toe tip is in there. And if you have ever made pie dough, you will know what the tiptoe tip is, even though you didn't even know it was a tip. Because I'm always on my tiptoes and I had no idea it was a tip or that people are doing that. So, tip tiptoes for life, peeps.
So, tell us about... This can scare a lot of people, transferring the dough. You've rolled it out, it's beautiful, you've cut it. Now, you have to get it into your pie plate. Do you kind of roll it up on a rolling pin? Do you do the four-fold, three folds, two folds?
Lisa Ludwinski:
We do one fold.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Lisa Ludwinski:
So, we will just gently pick it up, fold it in half. I kind of pat it a little bit, and then I'll gently lift it up, place it sort of in the center of the tin, and then unroll it onto the tin. But before I press it down into the corners, I will just kind of check to make sure that it's even along all sides of the circle. I guess, circles don't really have sides, but-
Jessie Sheehan:
I know what-
Lisa Ludwinski:
You know what I mean.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Lisa Ludwinski:
Yeah. And then, we'll press it in.
Jessie Sheehan:
And one thing I wanted to mention that is unique, I think, to you guys is greasing the pie plate. Are you guys still doing that? And then, I read that that sort of helps the pie dough, almost helps with the crimping and having the pie dough stick to the sides of which, I think, is a great tip for home bakers, because it can kind of slouch a little bit while you're trying to crimp. Can you just tell us about that?
Lisa Ludwinski:
Yeah. I think we originally started buttering the tins, just to make sure that they wouldn't stick to the pan, especially with the fruit pies that will bubble over, and then the fruit juices will basically turn into candy and it's hard to slice them. But it has sort of another purpose, which some bakers at Sister Pie discovered, not me, and they kind of told me about it when I... Anyway. So, yes, it can sort of act as a little bit of a glue for the dough to the tin. So, yeah, when you're rolling it out and crimping it, it kind of helps everything stay in place and not move around.
I will say, not having strict professional training or going to culinary school, one thing that's really great about that is that, I've been able to, with the staff and the people that have worked at Sister Pie over the years, develop these things, these aren't all coming from my brain, obviously. And so, it's through the experience of the staff making all this pie and all this dough, that they've contributed their own tips and tricks. And so, really, as a team, we figure out what are our best ways of doing things.
Jessie Sheehan:
Walk us through crimp drama, which I think is what you call it in the book, and about how, sometimes, people get a little freaked out by the amount of pressure you're putting on your crimp. I loved that.
Lisa Ludwinski:
Yeah, totally, because yeah, we're trying to make the crimps kind of maybe an inch deep. And I think the reason is that, if you were to bake up one of our crusts with smaller crimps, the definition in the crimps kind of disappears because the crust sort of bakes up and gets kind of almost fluffy looking. That's like a bad way of describing it because it's not fluffy, in texture, when you eat it, but it grows a little bit. And so, having a more defined crimp when it's raw, helps maintain that decorative edge when you go to bake it. And so, we'll kind of roll up the overhang of the dough, and we try to roll it up as tightly as we can with our fingers, specifically our thumbs, all the way around the edge. So, you're kind of thinking about rolling up a piece of paper so tightly, that no air could escape, and that's what you want to do with the dough.
And then, once you have that kind of ring of dough resting on, you really want it to be resting on the top of your pie plate. So, right on the edge, not inside the pie plate at all, because that could make it... So that the crimps fall inside or shrink down, so you want to crimp right up on top, and then you just use your one hand with a C shape and your other hand with your thumb, and you just push the dough in both directions and create a massive crimp. In our nine-inch pans, we get around 16, 17 crimps per pie.
Jessie Sheehan:
And now, this is something that really scares peeps. Can you talk a little bit about your blind baking stuff? And blind baking for... Well, Lisa will tell you what blind baking is. I won't. But I love the tinfoil. I don't know why I've been using parchment. And tinfoil... What am I doing? Tinfoil is so smart. So, sorry to bury the lead, peeps. But Lisa, can you tell us about how you guys blind bake and what it is, for those that maybe don't know?
Lisa Ludwinski:
Sure. So, it's the process of almost fully baking a crust before you put the filling in. And the reason that bakers do it is because, to get pie dough to a point where it's super flaky and crispy and done, has to happen at a different temperature, a higher temperature than what you're typically baking your fillings at. So, you're going to bake a pie crust at 450 degrees, but you're never going to bake salted maple filling at 450 degrees, because it would boil or burn or... We've accidentally done it before. Believe me, it's not that great.
But you kind of have to separate those steps. And so, we will take our crusts, we'll let them freeze, and you could even skip the freezing step at home. But if it has a 10-minute or 15-minute rest in your freezer at home, that's just going to kind of make it easier for you to set up for the blind bake. And also, it's great for the butter to be really cold before it hits that hot oven, just helps it be even flakier.
So, we'll take the crust out of the freezer, we will use a sheet of tinfoil that's probably 12 inches long, and we'll just fit it into the crust. And I like to wrap the tinfoil around the edges, which is why I prefer the tinfoil to parchment, because then, I can not only be protecting the crimps from the heat, but it also helps them stay in place a little bit. And then, I'll fill the tinfoil up, all the way to the top of the crimps with dried beans. And you can use those over and over again.
Now, they can go rancid, so if you're not baking pies every day, like we are, you could just stick the beans in your freezer after you use them, and just bring them out every time you need them. Then, you bake it for like 20 minutes or so, until it's a nice golden brown. It's not going to be fully, fully baked because it'll continue to bake after you put the filling in.
This is really about getting that golden brown crimp color, and then also to make sure that the very bottom of the pie dough is really baked.
Jessie Sheehan:
Usually, when I blind bake, I blind bake for a certain amount of time, then I take the pie dough out, then I take out the parchment and I use rice, and then I put it back in for more time. And I love the idea you're doing a longer period of time, but just once.I think, in the book, it says maybe even 25 to 27 minutes. I just think that's brilliant. It seems a little streamlined.
This is another thing I love because of my love of cream cheese, but tell people about what your trick is with cream cheese and soggy bottoms.
Lisa Ludwinski:
I like to make extra certain that you won't have a soggy bottom crust. And so, when we're making the fruit pies, whether it's a blind baked crust or a double crusted pie, in which we don't do a blind bake, we put a layer of cream cheese at the bottom. This sort of creates a seal between the juices of the fruit and the crust itself, so that you can still bite into a slice of rhubarb pie and get that nice, delicious, juicy rhubarb, but a nice crisp crust on the bottom.
Jessie Sheehan:
And just to clarify, just so people understand, so if it's a double crusted pie, like, peeps, imagine a regular old apple pie with a crust on the bottom, a crust on the top, you're not blind baking. But are you freezing till frozen solid before you fill and bake, to avoid your crimp slipping and slumping?
Lisa Ludwinski:
When we do the double crusted pies, we're still following kind of same idea as the blind bake, but we're just doing some of the steps out of order. So, with the double crusted pie, yeah, you're fitting your pie shell into the tin, you're filling up with apples, let's say, topping it with the second crust, and then crimping it up. From that point, it's ready to go, but we will usually rest it in the fridge or freezer for about 10 to 15 minutes, so that it can really kind of firm up. Because the dough gets kind of warm when you're working with it, so this is just nice to get it cold once again. And then, we'll bake that at the high temperature, the 450, for, pretty much, the same amount of time you would do the blind bake, just to ensure that we get that nice golden brown crust, that it definitely gets baked on the bottom, then we'll drop the temperature significantly so that the filling can bake at a more gentle temperature.
And so, we kind of do it differently, there's no tinfoil involved, but they're both with the same concept that the crust needs a higher temperature and the crust needs a fast, high temperature bake, and the filling needs a slow, low bake.
Jessie Sheehan:
I get it. And it's also good to know... From my bakery days, and I just have never stopped doing this, I always freeze the pie for an hour before I even bake it, because I'm so afraid of a slumped crimp, but I'm going to try pulling back on that amount of time to see where I get.
Lisa Ludwinski:
I think it's probably fine to do it that way. I mean, so many of the things that we do at the shop are based on bakery needs and freezer space.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, of course.
Lisa Ludwinski:
But I've also found, there's so many things that we've tried over the years to prevent the gap on apple pies, between the top crust and the apples. And so, there's various things that we do to prevent that, but one of them is making sure that we don't freeze it too long, because then, that sort of lattice top stays frozen in place, and it makes it harder to kind of fall with the apples as they bake down, if that makes sense.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Just so people know what Lisa's talking about, if you've ever... I feel like it can happen in a diner, but it can happen anywhere. You purchase a piece of apple pie or maybe you even make it at home, and you'll notice there's a gap between the top crust and those apples, and that's just because of the way the apples slump when they bake versus how the crust bakes.
One thing that you'll notice about Lisa's gorgeous, gorgeous pies in her book and in her shop, are the dark, beautiful crusts. Tell peeps how long you are suggesting that people bake a pie for. I think people get this idea that they can pull a pie at like 40 minutes or pull a pie when they see a little bit of color on the top. But what do you guys do?
Lisa Ludwinski:
I think that most of our color is coming from that initial bake of the crust, whether that's with a double crust or a blind bake. So, that initial 25 to 30 minutes is when you're getting that color.
But at that point, what we're looking for is that a filling is done. And so, that's the part, to me, that people are surprised at how long that can take, especially with fruit pies.
I remember baking a pie for the cookbook photo shoot at the photographer's home oven, and it was a rhubarb pie. And from start to finish, it took two hours to bake, because you got to make sure that that fruit is totally boiling in the center, so it's activating the starch that you're using, so that once you go, many hours later, to slice into the pie, it's a nice, solid slice of pie.
And so, I think that the color of our pies doesn't necessarily relate as much to that, but because we are making sort of a choice to have them be a darker crust, because I think that's what the color is once it's fully baked and once it doesn't have sort of that sogginess at the bottom or raw dough in the crimps or anything like that. So, we bake it fully through, is really what we're doing there.
And I mean, we also, at Sister Pie, work with a commercial convection oven, which means that everything we make is a little bit more toasty looking because of the way that the air circulates and how the oven works in general. At home, it's not as likely that you'll get as dark of a crust as some of the ones that we have.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. In general, don't be scared of a dark crust because that's just what's going to happen to crust if you bake your pie long enough so that you... The way I like to think of it is, you actually need to see the middle of the filling, bubbling, which is why a little people need... If you have a crumb topping, you need to make a teeny tiny hole in the tops or you can can poke around later on or your-
Lisa Ludwinski:
Yeah. Another thing we do is, if you happen to have a thermometer, if you have to have a probe thermometer, you can stick it in the top of the pie, and we kind of look for it to be 200 degrees and rising for a fruit pie, and then we take it out at that point.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love that. And then, just one of my fave things, because I love saying it so much, but can you tell peeps about sugar-sugar?
Lisa Ludwinski:
Yes. I love sugar-sugar, too. It's very pleasing to say.
Jessie Sheehan:
It is so pleasing.
Lisa Ludwinski:
Sugar-sugar is just a special combination of sugars that we use, at Sister Pie, for a lot of things. It's equal parts, granulated white sugar and turbinado sugar, also sometimes known as sugar in the raw, or raw sugar. I like it for the tops of pies. I like to use it to sweeten the cream cheese and the muffins. We'll use it on tops of pie sandwich cookies, when they're baking. I like it because it adds sweetness from the granulated sugar, pretty much just straight-up sugar, sweetness. And then, the turbinado sugar kind of gives it more of a textural difference, and so it's kind of crunchy.
So, we'll use it for a variety of different applications. We actually put it on top of our sweet scones before they bake, et cetera.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'd love to hear also about different Sister Pie fillings, like your cranberry crumble. And is it maple? What's the maple-
Lisa Ludwinski:
Salted maple?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. Will you talk about those? And all of them, because they're all delicious.
Lisa Ludwinski:
Sure. Yeah. Well, cranberry crumble is actually my favorite flavor, and it was one of the very first pies that I developed for Sister Pie. So, 10 years ago, for Thanksgiving, cranberry crumble was on the menu, and I made it because I had never had a straight-up cranberry pie before. And like we were saying earlier, so much of me wanting to do pie, or at least one element of it, was wanting to showcase Michigan produce. Michigan produces a lot of cranberries. They're very tart, which I enjoy a lot. And so, instead of making a pie that was like apple cranberry or pair of cranberry, I just wanted to make straight of cranberry.
Now, to be fair, there's a little, tiny bit of grated pear in the filling to help with thickening, but the flavor is pure cranberry. We make a cranberry compote that we then mix with whole cranberries, put it into a blind baked crust, and cover it with a buttery oat crumble. And to me, that is just ultimate pie with a little bit of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream on top. I love that.
And so, that's one that was truly just inspired by produce and what we have available. And then, other times, something like the apple sage gouda, for example, that's one in the cookbook. And it was like, how can we reinvent the wheel here? I mean, apple pie is apple pie, and people love it that way. And so, I am, sometimes, inspired by just adding something like a fresh herb or a cheese or nuts, so that it's still very approachable, it's not food for novelty's sake. It's something that people really, genuinely would like to try, but it might just be a tiny bit different than what they're used to.
So, a lot of traditional methods and traditional starting points, and then we sort of veer off here and there, a little bit.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, Lisa, I just want to thank you so much for this incredible conversation. So wonderfully and amazingly informative. So many things, so many. A billion and a half. And also, I just want you to know that you are my cherry pie.
Lisa Ludwinski:
Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugrà Premium, European style butter, and California Prunes for their support. Don't forget to subscribe to She's My Cherry Pie on your favorite podcast platform, and tell your baking buddies about us. Be sure to check out our other episodes and get tips and tricks for making the most popular baked goods around, from birthday cake to biscuits to blondies. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network, and is recorded at CityVox studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker, our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial assistant is Londyn Crenshaw. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie, and happy baking.