erin jeanne mcdowell transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You are listening to She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The 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.
Today's guest is our favorite fearless baker, Erin Jeanne McDowell. Erin is a recipe developer, food stylist, and the author of three cookbooks, including her most recent, “Savory Baking.” She's also the star of “Bake It Up A Notch,” the Food52 series on YouTube, and she's known for such contributions to the baking world as the Sturdy Pie Challenge. Search that hashtag if you don't know what I'm talking about. I'm so thrilled that Erin is joining me in just a minute to chat about “Savory Baking,” and more specifically quiche, Erin shares her best tips and we walk through the recipe for cob quiche from “Savory Baking.” Stay tuned for our conversation.
Thank you to Plugra Premium European Style Butter for supporting today's show. You might be new to Plugra Premium European Style Butter, but it's been a favorite in my fridge for some time. Whether I'm baking for fun or for work or developing recipes for my next cookbook, Plugra and its 82% butterfat are essential. The color, soft, creamy texture, and rich flavor it brings to my pie dough cannot be beat. My chocolate chip cookies, they're chewier and pudgier. The higher butterfat content means less moisture and more fat, which is precisely what you're looking for. Remember, fat equals flavor. Plugra European Style Butter is available in different forms for all your baking, cooking and snacking needs, including salted and unsalted, sticks and solids. I'm partial to unsalted Plugra. If you've learned anything listening to She's My Cherry Pie, it's that ingredients matter. The next time you bake, reach for Plugra and taste the difference it makes. From professional kitchens to your home kitchen, Plugra Premium European Style Butter is the perfect choice. Ask for Plugra at your favorite supermarket or specialty grocery store.
I have some exciting news. She's My Cherry Pie is headed to Dallas. On Tuesday, June 20th, we are hosting a special event at Bird Bakery to celebrate our show and all things baked goods. Join me and Team Cherry Bombe for networking, a panel conversation, and of course sweet treats. The event is from 3 to 5. Tickets are $30 and include a copy of the latest Cherry Bombe Magazine plus bites, coffee, and tea. Come meet other Bombesquad members and learn how bakers, pastry chefs and entrepreneurs in Dallas are mixing it up and making it happen. Tickets are on sale now at cherrybombe.com, or click on the link in our show notes. I hope to see you there. If there are any Dallas bakers or pastry chefs I should know about, be sure to DM me. Thank you to Plugra Premium European Style Butter for supporting this event.
Now let's check in with today's guest. Erin, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk quiche with you and so much more.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yes, thank you so much for having me. Always happy to talk all things quiche.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yay. So when you graduated from culinary school, food media is what you set out to pursue because it married writing and food, which were two of the things you loved, two of your passions. I feel like now everyone wants to be in food media, and I wondered about then, were your fellow students interested in it or was it sort of a unique pursuit back then?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Definitely it was maybe a little less common, and I mean certainly social media was not what it is today where now to be in food media, you can independently be in food media by producing your own content and making things like that. I had a lot of people when I would say that was what I wanted to do as a profession, be like, "Yeah, okay." For the most part, most of my instructors were really, really encouraging, but I definitely had a few who were less encouraging or just less confident. What I heard a lot was there are very few jobs in that actual field, and again, this is in the very early days of social media, like Facebook existed when I graduated pastry school and Instagram had just emerged. So it definitely was met with some different sort of reactions.
Jessie Sheehan:
Was cookbook writing also, did you have kind of an eventual goal of I want to do food media and then maybe I want to be writing cookbooks?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
I mean, I think I dreamt it, but I don't think I was fully secure in the fact that would definitely happen. That seemed really rare too. Again, with some of the teachers and instructors I had, I had one writing mentor, Irena Chalmers who was absolutely incredible. She was so encouraging and she was like, "Oh yeah, you'll write a book." But other teachers sort of were like, "Oh, that doesn't happen all the..." I think I definitely had tempered expectations and I just figured as long as I was doing something with pastry, I'd be good. The nice thing is you can write no matter what, whether you're doing it professionally or not. So I just always wrote and I hoped that one day I'd get to do it professionally, but I wasn't sure.
Jessie Sheehan:
I made this interesting discovery when I was going back to Food52 in anticipation of our chat today and kind of looking at your recipes because if you do a deep dive into the Food52 recipe archives, all your early, early recipes on the site are savory. It was such an incredible, for me, full circle in terms of thinking about Erin and her baking, and it of course makes so much sense in terms of your latest book, “Savory Baking,” which celebrate your salt tooth.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
I was absolutely one of their early community members just trying to be a part of what they were doing. So a lot of those early recipes are savory because I also didn't have a lot of... I was fresh out of school, I didn't have a lot of money, so I was trying to turn the things I was making for dinner and lunch to take to work into content, into what I was doing just because that was all I could do. You'll see a lot of very side dishy things too because that seemed to be a lot of what I was doing, and my roommates and I would sometimes contribute multiple things to a meal. So anyway.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us about your salt tooth.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Well, the salt tooth is, I think a lot of people talk about their sweet tooth and I feel that I do have a sweet tooth. I love desserts and obviously I love baking so much, but ever since I learned about baking, I was more excited to make things like Gougere or just anything that was on that savory side. I loved making pizza. I loved making savory scones and muffins instead of always putting fruit in them. So for me it was a very natural evolution of just realizing, ooh, that's really what I crave. I also find that when I'm trying to show off, that's what I make people because they're never seeing it coming maybe if they do associate me with the sweet stuff.
I remember once for the Cherry Bombe Jubilee, I made all savory pastries. I had laminated Gougere into pastry dough and I made bacon jam and I did all of these things. I remember it was like, this is what I really want to present to all the other women in food. I want them to see my salt tooth, my savory side. But yeah, it's just always been a thing for me. I always hoped to put that into a book. That was a goal for a long time.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So one of the recipes from the new book, from “Savory Baking” that I would love to chat with you about is your cob quiche. You're an absolute genius at all things baking, but you are known for pie due to your New York Times bestselling cookbook, “The Book On Pie.” So of course in talking about the quiche, I felt compelled to do a deep dive into your infamous all butter pie dough.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Got to start there.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right, here we go.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Got to start at the beginning.
Jessie Sheehan:
You have to start there.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
The flaky, flaky beginning.
Jessie Sheehan:
Exactly. Now for this recipe, for this particular quiche, you say that a pate brisee is fine, so you can kind of use either one, but I'm going to talk about the pie dough. So just so people know, Erin also has an incredible recipe for the pate brisee that's in her book. Do you want to just quickly tell us the difference between a pate brisee and an all butter pie dough?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yeah. In the pate brisee, the fat is mixed in much more fully and I actually make it in the food processor. So one of the reasons I say you can use that in this recipe is that custard pies like quiche are really, really quick and easy. So if you're looking to go the easier route and you just feel like pressing the food processor button a few times, the pate brisee works great with this quiche, but also if you're doing the show stopping thing, you want to impress with the flakiness that does abound in every single slice, the all butter is always my number one pick.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love it. So we're going to grab a large bowl and a whisk, and just first things first, a particular kind of bowl you like, glass, metal, and a particular kind of whisk, balloon, straight?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
At home, I'm usually using metal bowls and I have a lot of them, one of those graduated sets and many of each size. In video, I typically am using pretty ceramic ones or glass ones so that you can see what's going on. I don't really have a problem with glass. Just like when you're doing a lot of heavy lifting in the kitchen, that's one of those things where I sort of revert to the professional side. In professional kitchens you typically use those big metal bowls. I always like one that's bigger than you think you're going to need, especially if you're just making a quiche, you're only making a single crust amount. It's only 150 grams of flour. It's not very much.
But we're going to be moving it a lot and tossing it and doing things. So if you don't want some of that action ending up on your counter, you can just kind of go with a bigger bowl to begin with. As far as the whisk, we're really just going to combine the salt and the flour. So if you didn't even have a whisk handy and you wanted to do that with a fork or you wanted... I'm not going to lie, sometimes I do it with my hand like this. There's really no wrong way. We're not really needing to aerate the flour. In this case, we're not really needing the whisk, so this is definitely one time where whatever kind of whisk you got, if you got a big fork, if you got some fingers, just mix this all up.
Jessie Sheehan:
You're good to go. Are there particular brands of bowls or whisks that you would want to share?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
I can't think of the brand. I think the bowls that I use are maybe WinCo. They just come from restaurant supply. They're like a graduated set of bowls. For whisks, I do like whisks and spatulas, I'm always using GIR. They're my favorite. I like that they come in lots of different sizes. So again, you could grab the little whisk for this and just give a quick toss and not have to wash that big bulky thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
The flour that we're going to put into this bowl, do you have a brand that you like to use?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
I will say King Arthur for the purpose of your question, but I also just want to be very clear that I believe there is not necessarily one right flour. Certainly in “The Book On Pie” we make them with lots of different flours, so we make them with whole wheat and spelt, all kinds of things.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then there's fine sea salt in here. Why not kosher?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
I really like fine sea salt in general for baking. I keep it separate on my little salt and pepper station, and it's for baking. Kosher salt, I use obviously more in cooking. I might actually season the ingredients for the quiche with kosher salt, but I really like fine salt because it dissolves evenly. It's easier to weigh accurately, and what I mean by that is that fine sea salt is typically the same granule size even across different brands, whereas we know Morton and Diamond salt weigh very differently. It's something that I have done. It's also somewhat borrowed from one of my biggest mentors, Rose Levy Beranbaum. She always recommended using fine sea salt and I just did actually notice a difference in some of her recipes when I did versus when I didn't. So I've adopted that and always sort of done it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is there a brand of fine sea salt that you like?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
I use Baleine a lot.
Jessie Sheehan:
I like that one too. Next we're going to toss some cold half inch cubed unsalted butter in this flour salt mixture to coat the separate cubes and ensure they're fully coated. When you're cutting your butter into the flour, which is this next step, you say that we can use our hands, we can use a pastry cutter and basically we're pressing and flattening those cubes. So we're pressing-
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
The technical term I think is squish. We are squishing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Squish, exactly. Very technical. Yeah, we're squishing. So we're pressing and flattening our cubes into shards. Do you have a preference, hands versus pastry cutter, and do you have a brand of pastry cutter that you like?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
So I always use my hands. I never ever ever use a pastry cutter, but I recommend a pastry cutter for people who have naturally warm hands. My grandma used to always say I had cool pastry hands and they do always seem to just be cold. I'm a big believer that there isn't just one right way to do things. There's the way that's right for you. So the advantage of the pastry cutter, especially as we head into warm summer months and maybe we're feeling like making peach pies or cherry pies, we can use that and we can even refrigerate it or freeze it before we start mixing the dough and the metal on that pastry cutter is going to stay cold while you're mixing, so it can be really beneficial for sure.
I think the brand of pastry cutter that I use is from Ateco. I get a lot of those hand tools at my favorite baking supply store, which is called Bakedeco. It's inside Kerekes, which is a restaurant supply store in Brooklyn, but they have an amazing website. So even though I don't live New York City adjacent anymore, I'm still shopping at Bakedeco a lot.
Jessie Sheehan:
Amazing. You also give people the choice of gently pulsing in a food processor. That's not a preference for you, but you're saying if that's what you want to do, as long as you do it gently, I'm okay with that.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
The biggest problem with the food processor and the word gentle is so key, just to unpack it slightly, it's like obviously we don't want the butter pieces to get too small because then we're actually headed to a different type of dough territory. We're headed to pate brisee. But it's also that when you do it in the food processor, you're going to end up with more round pellet sized pieces of fat, whereas when you're doing it with your hands, you're going to end up more with these thin shards. When you do a pastry cutter, it's somewhere in between. So you get some sort of pieces that are flatter and you get some pieces that are a little bit more round and pebble-like.
The pebble-like is more likely to have problems at various other points in the pie baking process. So especially when people come to me and they consistently have trouble, I'm like, "Maybe just try mixing by hand once and seeing if that helps. If it doesn't, it could be something else. It could be your oven, it could be whatever." But a lot of times I find that that little pebble thing, it's easier for the fat to break out of the crust, to melt out of the crust. It's easier for it to kind of sit on the surface and then leach out in the oven, especially during parbaking and blind baking. So when people have those problems, sometimes I think it has to do with that pellety effect. I think hands are better.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's such a great segue because in the rest of you we're continuing to coat our butter by tossing until we reach, and this is like a Erin genius thing, but until we reach our desired fat level or size of fat, until that is reached. You briefly need to tell peeps about fat levels because it is one of your, I think, one of many genius explanations.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
That helps us all understand pie dough and be better at making it.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Thank you. This is where I get so excited because thank you for getting that excited about it because to me it felt like that was something that was always missing from so many things written about pie dough and it is difficult to write it into the recipe because you don't necessarily want to write into a recipe. Oh, you can mix it like this or you can mix it like this or you can mix it like this. So “The Book On Pie” gave me a really cool opportunity to be able to show a lot of just that theory behind it. Then I could give you the recipes and say, "Hey, the power is in your hands."
When you mix fat in more finely, we end up with a denser, more mealy crust. When we leave the fat pieces a little bit larger, we end up with a flakier crust, and that's just because the large pieces of butter, when they hit the heat of the oven and they are cold because of course you've chilled your pie crust for a long time before you baked it, the moisture evaporates out and it sort of puffs up the dough and that's where we literally get those visible flakes that keep the dough so tender and crunchy and all of those things.
The problem is of course though, the larger you leave the pieces of fat, it can be a little bit more difficult to work with. So it's just this balance of the technique because you have to, even though you're leaving it in large pieces, you have to make sure that fat is coated in flour at all stages, otherwise it's going to be prone again to melting out, breaking out of your crust, all of those things. I definitely have troubleshooting tips, things that people can do. Sometimes I add a fold to my dough.
The cool thing about this is I'm able to leave the butter in larger pieces, but then by incorporating a fold, I'm also making sure that it's wrapped up, it's fully coated and encased in more dough and it's not going to be as prone to melting out. So there's all of these different ways you can get different kind of levels of flakiness. In “The Book On Pie,” I actually show, okay, this size baked up like this, this size baked up like this. It's really cool for people to see that side by side. It's just really cool to see. It always delights me anyway.
Jessie Sheehan:
I agree because people, myself included, sometimes just particularly when it's an expert like you, we blindly follow. If Erin says to do it, let's do it. But it's so nice to be able to actually see in a photograph or because the expert explains it, that there are subtle differences in this is why. I think I've seen in The Book of Pie, and maybe in “Savory Baking” too, but when you do that more mealy crust, when you're breaking up the butter more, it's a kind of slightly better way to do it, let's say if you have a more liquid filling, like you're making a cream pie as opposed to an apple pie or something like that.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
The more liquid the filling is, especially when it goes into the crust, it's going to be more likely to absorb into light flaky layers. We don't typically pour a custard into a puff pastry crust for that same reason. It would just absorb a lot of it, prevent the puff pastry from rising, yeah, and that includes quiche, of course. Quiche, sometimes it's nice to just keep it. So I typically say for a mealy crust you want to go pea-sized or smaller, but that's also one little tip because a lot of people don't realize this, mixing the fat in more fully is also a surefire way to make sure your decorations stay how you want them looking.
So dough where you've mixed the fat in more fully, crimps will hold better, cutouts, braids, all of those things. There's advantages to flaky dough, delicious and photogenic advantages, but there's also delicious and photogenic advantages to using the other. When you see my books, like in “Savory Baking,” every single pie is made with a slightly different crust because I am adjusting the crust to what that filling is to make the perfect one.
Jessie Sheehan:
In this instance, because we're doing all butter pie dough recipe, we want flaky, so we want our fat level to be walnut sized, little bit bigger.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to make a well in the center of our coated butter and flour and salt, and if we're using a food processor, at this point we're transferring our ingredients to a bowl. You don't want to do this part in a food processor. You're going to add some water and toss with your hands until the flour's hydrated and gently knead in the bowl. Can you unpack gently knead?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yes. At the beginning part when I add water, I'm tossing because that's a way to help distribute the water without necessarily... you're also breaking things up just by the nature of tossing. So when you add, especially to something small like that, a little bit of water, it has a tendency to bond to whatever's closest. So the little clump of flour that it touches first, they form a clump, but then you're left with all this dry powder in the bottom of the bowl. So one of the things I'm trying to do at the beginning is almost break up those clumps and prevent there from being one big pocket of hydrated dough and then a bunch of powder.
Because that's where some people I think accidentally add too much, is that they don't realize how much water is actually trapped in that little dough packet thing. Once it starts to come together and the whole thing is looking like a dough and it's looking less powdery, that's when I start kneading because usually that kneading motion shows you whether or not you need to add more liquid. If you knead a few times and the dough starts picking up what's in the bottom of the bowl, you know there's enough moisture in there already. But if you knead it a few times and it's falling apart, you know, okay, I need to add a little bit more moisture to it.
Jessie Sheehan:
At this point we might add one tablespoon more water if needed. You want your dough to be uniformly combined but not necessarily uniformly smooth and that's what-
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yeah, it'll be kind of craggly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, that's what you wrote. You've said it's too dry if we see patches of flour and it's too wet if there's a sticky surface. So we're looking for sort of that happy medium, which I found really helpful. I know in an effort to not overwork my dough, I feel like I will sometimes have dry patches because I don't want to overwork and I also don't want to add too much water, so I will end up with some dry patches.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
I think I need to dispel one thing that I've been finding more and more.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, please. Please, please.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
I think people need to be less scared of overworking the dough. I'm not saying it's impossible, you definitely can, but I've been teaching these private pie classes recently just via Zoom, and it's been amazing because you literally can find the exact moment where people have gone wrong every other time or most of the times, and we can fix it. What I'm noticing is that everyone is terrified to mix it. When they see how much I actually mix it, they're kind of like, "Whoa." I just want to say it's not bread. We're not kneading it for 10 minutes or eight minutes or even three minutes. But I think that fear is put into us by years of recipes that were printed with the wording just as needed or only until combined, these words that really emphasize minimal mixing.
Now again, it does make the dough harder to roll out the more you mix it, but as long as you're giving it enough chill time to relax, that shouldn't be a problem. I think especially when people are worried and they just have that one little dry patch, I want to encourage, just knead a couple more times because that might be enough to hydrate that one little dry patch. I'm just amazed, that seems to be a really consistent problem that really surprised me. I thought also a lot of people tended to make it over hydrated and that can produce a crust that's really tough to get your fork through and it's cracker-like and crisp. It doesn't always bake up like a total mistake because it's crunchy, and when you hear the crunch you're like, "Oh, maybe I made a good crust," and then you're chewing it and you're like, "Oh, it's not quite what I meant."
Jessie Sheehan:
Don't be scared to focus on little dry patches and get rid of them either by your way of saying don't be afraid to knead or if you're adding a little tiny bit of water, try doing it just on the spot with kneading.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yes, that's what I also recommend. I take the big dough that's come together out of the bowl entirely and then I usually dip my fingers in iced water and I just flick them into the bowl, and that way, just those couple drops of water can bring together what's left and then we can knead it all together. Yeah, I completely agree.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So now we're going to form our dough into a disc. We're going to wrap our dough in plastic and we're going to chill for 30 minutes minimum. That seems wonderfully short to me. Is that really all it needs? I feel like everybody writes-
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
That's sort of evil laughter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Everybody writes, "Oh, it has to be an hour."
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yeah. Okay. In “The Book On Pie,” I have this chart about preferred and recommended chill times. So my recommended chill time would be an hour, but I'm telling you as a person who's baked a lot of pies that I have gotten away with 30 minutes many times. Here's sometimes you cannot get away with 30 minutes, like August in a cabin in the woods with no air conditioning, give it an hour, it's worth it. But there are lots of times, in the dead of winter, it's Thanksgiving, you're making a lot of pies and it only takes you 30 minutes after putting the first dough in to mix the next one. Yeah, you're probably good to go. The dough will also tell you if it's not ready. If it feels soft, it needs more time, because that's the fat being soft. It needs to firm up.
Also, if you try to roll it out and it doesn't cooperate, it keeps shrinking on you, that means it needs more relax time. So the dough is going to tell you if it's not ready in 30 minutes. But again, it's also one of those things in the food styling world, the number of times I would have to be somewhere and I would get a pie going and I just didn't have the same amount of time that I would have if it was like a dreamy summer day and I'm making a pie lazily just for you. You know what I mean? That would be a very different level of giving it... I might even give it two hours. I might give it three. I might just make the dough and let it rest overnight.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to lightly dust our work surface and dust the disc with flour as well. We're going to use a rolling pin. I wondered if you had a brand or a style or both that you like best?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
I use this one from, he's a woodworker and Tom Knuck is the brand they used to sell them in the Food52 shop, but he is an individual, still sells them their French handled pins. I do think though that pins are very personal and this is my brief pin story. I always use French handled pins and was literally teaching people to use French handled pins. During “The Book On Pie,” when we were making so many pies, both my hands and my colleague Katie's hands were getting so sore. They weren't showing physical bruises but they were sore. I realized I needed to use a pin with handles instead so that I could grip it instead of applying pressure over and over on the palms of my hands. So now I also like to specifically say that people who have arthritis or other hand related issues, joint pain, I would probably recommend using a pin with handles because it's going to be overall a lot more pleasant for you in the process. So I think those things are very personal.
Jessie Sheehan:
Grab our rolling pin, place it in the center of our disc and we're going to lightly press and roll away, and then we're going to place it back in the center and lightly press and roll it towards us, which I think... is it possible Erin, that's a slightly unique way of doing it? I feel like a lot of recipes push away from you, turn the dough, push away from you. I feel like I never read pull it towards you, which I'm very excited to read.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
I do also recommend rotating the dough while you work just because keeping the dough in motion prevents needing to use a ton of extra flour while you're rolling, so that's always good. The reason that I instruct to roll this way, again, this is something that I've noticed from teaching for a long time, what I notice is that people push the pin back and forth or even if they just push it away from them, that's how you end up with very different thicknesses at the outer edge versus in the center. When it comes to keeping the dough round, which is something that I promise to everyone out there, it just comes with practice, practice makes piefect, as I always like to say, but all of these things with learning this muscle memory of applying even pressure, that is how I describe it.
I describe it as starting in the middle and pushing away from you, releasing pressure, putting it back in the middle, and then applying that same amount of pressure coming towards you. Now if that doesn't feel natural or good, then don't do it. Also, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But this is how I teach people who are struggling to roll, and specifically people who are struggling to roll evenly, which is a pretty common problem. People really struggle with it being thick on this side and thin on this side and that one piece that cracks because it got so thin. So this is how I've been able to teach people effectively to apply that even pressure.
Jessie Sheehan:
As you said, you're definitely moving the dough, you're rotating. Also, you suggest flipping on occasion while you're working too, which is great. I thought this was a great tip, focus more on the thickness of the pie dough as opposed to the diameter. We're all trying to get this, that's maybe an inch bigger than our pie plate, but if we focus more on getting something that's one quarter inch all the way around, you're going to have the right size in diameter.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
That's one of those things I find in general in baking, you'll see that instruction in “Savory Baking” a lot, not just on pies and different pastries. If you get it to a half an inch and then we're going to trim it to a specific size anyway, so don't worry about exactly what size it is. I do sometimes still provide sizes for a reference point, and obviously with pies, one of the things I also notice a lot is that there aren't a lot of regulated pie dish sizes. It is typically nine inches, but a lot of people will come to me and be like, "I don't understand. Your pie dough doesn't make enough to cover my pie plate." Then I have them measure their pie plate and it's just randomly like a vintage Pyrex 10 inch, or it's 11 or it's 12 and they're like, "Oh my god, I had no idea it was making a giant pie."
Jessie Sheehan:
So true. Speaking of pie plates, because now we're going to transfer our dough to one, do you have a favorite brand or favorite type, glass versus metal?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
My favorite most used pie plate is it retails around $15 and it comes from USA Pan and it is a non-stick metal pie plate. I use that one the most and I have a lot of them. One of the biggest reasons that I like them as someone who bakes a lot of pies is that they are lightweight and easy to stack, whereas my ceramic pie plate collection is a little bit tougher to do that with. I have always preferred metal or ceramic, but early in my career, and I'm sure if you had done a deep dive on Food52 you might have found this and you could have called me out on it, that I used to recommend that people use glass.
That was because I found that so many people were under baking their pies and I still do find that glass is an amazing tool for referencing if the pie is fully baked because you can see through it. So that's wonderful, but glass does the worst job at evenly browning the pie and it also, for whatever reason, seems to stick the worst. Metal and a glossy ceramic seem to have the best release capability for me because I love a sturdy pie release.
Jessie Sheehan:
We do. So next we're going to wrap our dough around our rolling pin, and I love this verb, we're going to unfurl it into our pie plate. Can you just unpack the wrapping and then the unfurling?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yeah, I see some people do this thing where they fold the dough, and that definitely works because those creases aren't going to show in the end. But I find that the process of folding it just for me, it always felt like more handling, more time for the heat of my hands to be touching the dough. So I like to use the rolling pin. Also, if you have it wrapped around the pin, it's so easy. You just put the end of it on one edge of the pie dish. It kind of does the work for you and it just falls into the dish. I just always found it to be so simple and your pin is always right there, then you're not touching it with your hands.
The next thing that I do is lift the dough at the edges and really press to make sure it's in contact with the pan. So I'm about to be handling it a lot. I like avoiding folding it and I really don't like when people just try to transfer it by putting their hands underneath and lifting it. It's just going to be prone to ripping if you move your hands apart a little too much. There's just a lot of things that could potentially go wrong with too much handling at that stage. It's very thin.
Jessie Sheehan:
Next thing we're going to do is we're going to use scissors to trim away some excess dough, leaving about a half inch of excess for a crimp. We're going to tuck our excess dough until it's flushed with the edge of the plate and then press lightly to seal and crimp. You talk about both finger crimps and utensil crimps. Could you just briefly tell us about each one?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Finger crimps are crimps that you do with your hands to create different effects and kind of that classic fluted edge that we think of with a pie. It could be done with a finger crimp. Now, I do want to say you can also use your knuckle, knuckle or finger crimps, crimps made with our hands. Then utensil crimps, just use any utensil in the kitchen. Sometimes I use the edge of my tongs to create a little ruffle effect. I use forks, spoons, even my ceramic pie weights. You can press those around the outside edge and it'll make little divots in the outside edge. So there's lots of ways you can create an effect without having to have a lot of skilled manipulation of your hands too.
Jessie Sheehan:
Next we're going to parbake this pie dough because we're going to be putting a filling in it. In other words, it's going to get baked twice, once to kind of make it a little bit brown, a little bit crispy, kind of set our pie dough, then we're going to add our filling. So we need to dock this pie dough. Would you dock it if it was a double crust pie?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Typically-
Jessie Sheehan:
You're making an apple pie and maybe define dock?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yeah, yeah, so docking is just poking holes in the crust. It allows some designated places for steam to escape, which can help the crust bake more evenly as well as preventing sogginess from forming between anywhere where the steam is occurring and the pan. You're kind of encouraging it like you will go out, the steam will go out through these holes that I'm creating instead of staying trapped in any way and creating a dreaded soggy bottom. I usually just do it with a fork, but I do also... there's a very cool tool you can get at Bakedeco or any kind of restaurant supply store that's called a docker. It's a rolling thing with spikes on it. It's just cool to have if you make a lot of pies or pastries like that.
I dock it before I put the pie weights in. Sometimes it even needs it when you remove those pie weights, especially with a flaky dough, which is what we're making with this quiche. The weights are supporting it and preventing it from puffing up, but they're also kind of covering some of those holes we made. It's still coming up through those holes, which is good, but it's also being sort of forced. When we remove the weights, we might need to give it a few more spots to come out through or it can start to puff up the dough and you can end up... it's sometimes an exciting thing because it shows just how flaky the dough is that you made. You're like, "Whoa, it's puffing up like crazy. It cannot be contained." But we want it to have room for filling. If you notice that it's puffing up at that point, you can also just pierce it with a pairing knife, the tip of a pairing knife and it'll just deflate again.
Jessie Sheehan:
After we've docked our crust, we've crimped it. Do we put it in the freezer or the refrigerator? I know you want it well chilled. I was wondering how much time and which place.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
I prefer a longer chill in the refrigerator over a shorter chill in the freezer, but I'm not saying that you can't use the freezer in a pinch. So it's more important that it's really cold. The freezer also becomes problematic for some materials. Even though they are safe to go into the oven at high temperatures, if you're taking a glass pan from the freezer to a 425 degree oven, it could crack, especially if you're using something like a pizza stone or a baking steel to help ensure you have a really crispy bottom crust. That's the other reason I like to recommend the refrigerator instead is it gives you that opportunity to just chill longer for that and not risk maybe breaking something. It's also another reason to love metal pie plates because you don't have that concern if you do use the freezer.
Jessie Sheehan:
Next we're going to cut a square of parchment paper larger than the diameter of our plate. I learned this cool trick recently where you crumple up your paper before you put it into the pie and then fill it with weights and that makes it a teeny bit easier to kind of get that paper to stick to your now very cold pie dough. Do you do that?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Definitely, yes, I do that. It also just helps it form into the shape better, if you just try to lay a flat piece over and pour the weights over it. I mean, I could probably even find an old video of me doing that and it just being like you can do it, it just doesn't look nearly as nice as when you can just form it in and then there's a nice space for your pie weights to go.
Jessie Sheehan:
So once our parchment is on top of our cold pie dough, we're going to fill with pie weights up to the rim of the plate, which I love knowing that because I think that's important. If you don't fill enough, your crimp can still collapse, so it's nice to do it all the way to the rim of the plate. I think ceramic are your fave kind of pie weights, but you'll use rice or you'll recommend rice or beans for-
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
100%, yes. Oh, I love Stella Parks, this technique of using sugar because if you're a baker you already have sugar and she is so amazing and also an incredible pie baker. I love that one. She uses foil instead of parchment though when she does that, and I think that is an important distinction that if you're going to use the sugar, the foil is a little bit easier and sturdier for getting it in and out of the pie pan. But then you can reuse the sugar, which is great. That's something you can't do if you use rice or beans or something. I mean, you can reuse them but you can't eat it. With the sugar, you can eat the sugar that you use. So that's cool. It's just a very no waste thing.
I have these ceramic pie weights and I have a love hate relationship with this and hopefully some other day soon we'll talk because I'm hoping to change this. I would like to create a perfect pie weight. More on that down the line, but for now, my first frustration with pie weights is that they don't sell them in the proper quantity. So even when you buy ceramic pie weights, which are quite an investment really, they're like $19 or $15 for a set and you need about three or four sets to fill a standard pie plate. That I think is just unfortunate because it's sending the wrong message in the supply store of how much you need to do this.
Jessie Sheehan:
Actually we probably did this before we filled with pie weights, we want to put that chilled pie crust or pie dough in our pan onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Do you have a favorite baking sheet?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
I buy my baking sheets at restaurant supply stores, so they usually cost like five to $8 a baking sheet and I have a lot, so that's why I use those. That's where I suggest people go, even just a local restaurant supply store in your town, they'll typically let you go in and purchase things like that. I love going to restaurant supply store specifically to get all the different sizes I want.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to bake at 425, preferably with a baking steel or stone. So two queries, one, brands, and two, I mean I think I know the answer, but does it just help with that soggy bottom?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
It does, yeah. So the Baking Steel actually is the brand. So that's my favorite brand. That was started by someone who also graduated from the same culinary school that I did and it's fabulous for pizza and bread. But I think a lot of people don't think of it as something they can use for pie dough. So it's also the kind of thing I am not suggesting you can't make a great pie if you don't have either of these things. I'm more just saying, "Hey, did you know that if you own a pizza stone or baking steel that you can use that also when you bake pies?" Because I know for me personally, I love when my kitchen tools can pull double, triple, quadruple duty.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love that. So this is about 15 to 17 minutes. Take it out of the oven. We're going to remove the parchment paper and the pie weights. At this point if we've noticed some puffiness, we're going to dock our puffy sections. Would you egg wash the crimp at this point for a quiche or would you not worry about that?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Great question. I typically find that when you're parbaking, you don't need to egg wash. So egg wash is promoting browning and it's also giving a shine. The egg white is promoting a shine on the exterior. So if you want that look, you absolutely can do it and that would be an okay time to do it. When you remove the pie weights, you could do it. You also could do it before you put the pie weights in because most parchment paper is non-stick and it's not going to create any issue. I just find that it typically browns sufficiently because it is getting baked twice. I find that it browns sufficiently in that amount of time and so I don't typically do egg wash on parbaked pies, unless I want that shine. A reminder that you can then just use the egg white too if you just want a little shine. You don't have to encourage browning if you don't want to.
Jessie Sheehan:
Getting off track for one second on egg wash, I like to do one egg and a teeny bit of salt because I find that helps break down that membrane because sometimes when you're trying to make your egg wash with... but I notice you use water, is there a reason that you like water versus salt?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Well, I use water and salt, so I usually do a pinch of salt and water in mine. So the same reason for the salt. I just find that when I add a little bit of water, a splash of water, it brushes a little bit more uniformly. But I also quite like not adding any water does prevent it from being too liquid. So if you are ever trying to get that very precise coating, I think what you just described of not adding any water is much better because you have much more control because it's like a thicker wash. Sometimes instead of water I'll use a little bit of cream and that has a different sort of role in it as well. But again, it's just they're very minor differences, but it's fun to play with.
Jessie Sheehan:
Pie is heading back into our oven, and now it's about two to three minutes, let's say, maybe a little bit longer just to kind of lightly brown the bottom and just continue to set.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
One of the biggest things I always tell people to look for is that it should be a uniform color. It should be pale in color on the base and sides, and if it looks dark anywhere or shiny, that's a sign that it's still under baked.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to cool our crust completely and we're going to make our filling. This is a cob quiche, which I love, like a riff on a cob salad, and we're going to heat our oven to 375 degrees. Rack is in the bottom of the oven. Can you tell us why it's great to have it in the bottom?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
I like to do the final bake of pies, in general, it's nice to bake pies on the lower part of the oven because it slows the browning, whereas typically if it's closer to the top of the oven, it's going to brown more visibly on the surface. We're actually trying to get the bottom more brown. So this doesn't necessarily work if your heat source isn't coming from the bottom of the oven, but in most ovens, even when it has a fan or some kind of circulation, it is. So having it in the lower portion of the oven is really helpful just for ensuring a nice golden brown bottom crust.
Jessie Sheehan:
First thing we're going to do is we're going to sprinkle some finely grated Parm, not packed. I just want to flag that many bakers, including Erin, I think are very pro-scale and particularly something like Parmesan. It can be if you're confused about, what do you mean not packed, how much cheese. If you have a scale, it's going to be a lot easier.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Definitely.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to sprinkle finely grated Parm over the base. We're going to talk about all of the ingredients and how they sort of get layered at this point. What's nice about starting with that layer of Parm on the bottom?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
So it's a little bit of a seasoning thing. Everywhere that you're touching crust, you're going to get the little bit of salty kick, which is cool. It's also a little bit of a protection in the case of a custard pie from moisture absorbing too much into the filling because of course the Parm is going to sort of form almost its own protective layer. It won't behave exactly like it would, if you grate Parm into a hot cast iron skillet, you can make like a Parmesan cracker or tuile just with Parmesan and it's so delicious. It won't exactly do that because you are going to put custard on top. Sometimes in some recipes, I might even return it to the oven and get it browned a little bit if you're going for that. But in this case that's not really what it's doing, but it is going to sort of seal the crust in a way that the custard is going to be its own separate thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Next we're going to arrange some diced cooked chicken. I wonder, can we use a rotisserie chicken just as a hack so we don't have-
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
For sure. You already made piecrust, baby. Take a break. Rotisserie chicken or even leftover chicken that you braised or stewed and just take the skin off of it even if you flavored it in a specific way, any kind of chicken would be great here.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we're going to take our bacon. Do we finely chop it and then cook it or do we cook it and then... I know that sounds funny, but I've recently been playing around with bacon and realized you are a million times better off finely chopping before you cook.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
It definitely makes it go a lot faster. So that's what I was going to say is I typically chop it before I cook because then it's going to cook a lot quicker and it's going to render it's fat more evenly. It's easier to get it. When you have that thing with bacon where one part of it is really crisp and then the other part is still soft because there was more fat there. You just avoid that if you chop it. But that said, again, say you have some leftover bacon from breakfast two days ago and it's already cooked, and yeah, then just chop it after cooking. That's fine too.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect. We have our Parm, we have our chicken, we have our bacon. We're going to do an even layer of crumbled blue cheese. I wondered if there was a brand of blue cheese that you love or it might be hard-
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Well, there is one that I sometimes have seen. It is usually just labeled in every grocery store I've seen it in, just Danish blue, but I don't know what the brand is. I don't know who's making it, but I've gotten it in many grocery stores around the United States even just labeled Danish blue. The variegation in it is extremely blue. It's a beautiful color, but I just find it's a really nice blend of tanginess and creaminess because some blue cheeses are very, very rich and soft and I love that. But in a pie, they're not going to stay as crumbles, like a Gorgonzola Dolce is not going to work as well in this recipe as one where when we take a bite we might want to get a crumble of blue cheese.
Jessie Sheehan:
We have our cheese, and then we're going to do some thinly sliced scallions on top.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Those are kind of our filling ingredients. But now we're going to make our custard. So in a medium bowl, we are going to whisk our eggs. We're going to whisk some whole milk. Here, we're going to use some kosher salt.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm assuming we should probably even go for some Diamond Crystal if we've got it.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Just because of that trickiness with Morton's. Some freshly ground black pepper. We're going to pour that over the filling. I think I know the reason, but why not mix all of that together, the crumbled cheese and the bacon and the chicken in the custard and then pour it all into the crust.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yeah, this is actually a general rule for me for all custard pies. I refer to these kind of pies as a custard pie with inclusions. So another example of that would be pecan pie. What I don't like about mixing the pecans into the custard is then when you pour it, it always pours unevenly anyway and all the pecans just sink to the bottom and then the custard and you end up sometimes with an actual layer of pecans and a layer of custard. If you pack in your inclusions into the crust, you can also make sure that, like I said, even layers so that when we're taking bites, everyone's getting the same amount of everything and you can visualize how full it needs to be.
Then the custard, it's liquid, so it's going to naturally fall between the nooks and crannies of anything that you put into the crust. So why do it the other way and have splashing and sloshing? Just put everything in, then pour the custard over. Then when we put it in the oven, it's going to just bind everything perfectly because it's in all those nooks and crannies.
Jessie Sheehan:
Next we're going to sprinkle with a little bit more Parm and we're going to bake until the custard is set at the edges, but just slightly jiggly in the center, about 30 to 35 minutes. I love this little note. If you want a slightly browner topping, you can 100% stick it under the broiler at this point for about one to three minutes.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Just watch carefully, obviously.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Especially for that Parm layer on the top, or if you just like... I know, especially some people, even with an omelet, it's like even if they want the center soft, they still want some crispy bits.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right before serving, because what's so fabulous about this pie is it's got the elements of a cob salad inside and we're also going to have a salad, and there's a great picture in the book, a salad on top of the quiche or next to the slices, but we're going to make salad dressing in a jar, which is just a great way because it's-
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Everyone loves that, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, emulsifying, easy peasy, et cetera, et cetera. It's already in the jar that you'd save it in-
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
I knew you'd like that part because... I knew that was going to be Jessie approved.
Jessie Sheehan:
So Jessie approved, can't even tell you. It says salad dressing. I wonder if it's your go-to, but just oil, red wine, vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yeah, it's sort of like this one's a little bit just like a real simple red wine, vinegar one, like something that you might get on the salad at your favorite Jersey Italian joint.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. Yum. Then the salad, again, easy peasy. Some diced avocado and some lemon juice in a bowl, quartered cherry tomatoes, minced chives, romaine, and dress. Then can cool our quiche about 15 minutes and serve warm with our salad on top or next to our slices. Can you just remind everyone if they don't already know, and I hope they do, about your trick about sample slices?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yeah, yeah. So-
Jessie Sheehan:
And using a small serrated knife.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Yeah, I think it's great. I actually did get a bit of flack for this when I first started sharing it because in professional kitchens, to evenly portion things, you typically cut all the way across something and then you keep cutting across to make your portions. In the food styling world, when I'm trying to get a really, really perfect slice of something, I don't do that and it really angers some corners of the internet. But I like to take what I call the sacrifice slice, which is just a really, really tiny piece on any pie, but especially a custard pie. Custard pies really cut very easily and beautifully, typically. They hold the slice really well.
So just taking a little sliver out, once you have that little bit of wiggle room, it makes it so easy to remove the other piece. I want to clarify that it comes from sort of a food styling tip, but I think nowadays a lot of people do want to show like, "Look at my slice of pie," and that I think one of the things that I find is that sometimes I go out and about and even the pies I see out and about sometimes don't even look that great. When people are making them at home, it feels like they're getting the best of all of those worlds in one. So if you want to have that triumphant moment in a perfect slice, I applaud you and encourage you, just take a sacrifice slice first.
Jessie Sheehan:
I don't even think I have one at home, but after reading about this, I think I'm going to get one. You kind of almost a pairing knife sized serrated, like a little serrated knife is sort of the best tool in your opinion.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
It really helps, yeah. That's kind of a food styling trick in general. I like to use those small serrated knives, but it really helps because sometimes serration is nice for the edge of the crust. You don't need to use it for the base of the crust if you don't want, because it can be helpful to have a longer blade at that point. But I just find that little, smaller serrated with more control is really lovely for getting a clean edge there.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today, Erin. I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:
Oh, back at you, baby.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugra Premium European Style Butter 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. 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, and our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie, and happy baking.