Want to make some "Bake Off"-level pies this Thanksgiving? Here are a pastry expert's best tips

Thanksgiving is almost here! 

For anyone planning on doing any baking, you may be ferociously Googling and flipping through baking cookbooks to ensure you've thoroughly prepared to make an array of elite pies. Do not fret, though, because we've done (some of) the work for you.

Last year, Salon staff writer Joy Saha wrote "3 simple baking tips from “The Great British Bake Off” for perfect pies this Thanksgiving". This year, we reached out to Kierin Baldwin, a chef-instructor of Pastry and Baking Arts at the Institute of Culinary Education’s New York City campus, to further explore those concepts.

As Baldwin explains, there are many, many ways to approach pie making, but with her tips in mind, this Thanksgiving is sure to be a hit. And that's just one more thing to give thanks for, right? 

Getting the right dough temperature 

"Try to work cold while making pie dough, but I don’t recommend refrigerating the dry ingredients or your bowl. If they are cold, they can form condensation when they are taken out of the fridge, which can make them harder to work with and lead to an over-hydrated crust."

How to best ensure a flaky crust

"To get the flakiest crust, the crust should be cold when it goes into the oven, so do cool your pie fillings before putting them in the crust. And for pies with fruit filling, I like to chill the whole pie once the filling has been added until the crust is firm and then I put it in the oven."

Should I always be blind baking?

"When it comes to blind baking, I used to be a staunch believer in always par baking every bottom pie crust, but I have changed my tune. With most fruit pie crusts, I no longer bother to do this. Instead, I like to bake the pie with the bottom of the pan directly on a preheated baking stone or steel — or even an overturned cast iron pan. This transfers a lot of heat directly to the bottom of the pie crust and allows it to cook quickly, thus avoiding a soggy bottom. I also swear by starting my pie at a fairly high temperature — 425 degrees — and then lowering it as it bakes. This allows the crust to bake quickly and lowering the heat gives the filling time to catch up and cook through more slowly. 

"Regarding blind baking, I always, always, always par bake any crust that will have a custard-type filling in it. This means any filling that has eggs in it and is being baked to set those eggs in order to thicken the filling. Pumpkin and pecan pie are both custards in my book and they should be baked at a lower temperature to gently and evenly coagulate the eggs. About 300 to 325 degrees is usually what I go for. I implicitly distrust any custard pie recipe that tells you to bake it at a higher temperature because it just isn’t right. And, it’s what will cause your custard pie to form big cracks in the middle!" 

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How to avoid burnt pie edges 

"If the crust starts to get too dark, I swear by a ring of foil wrapped around the crust to protect it. You can keep them and reuse them many times too."

What about par baking? 

"For par baking, I like to use dried beans, rice or granulated sugar to weigh the crust so it won’t bubble. All of them work, just make sure you really put enough in there to fill the pie. It needs to both hold the bottom of the crust down and hold the sides of it up. You can dock [poke holes in] the crust if you would like, but you don’t have to. In fact, if you have a very liquid filling, you should skip it or risk the dreaded soggy bottom from having your filling seep under the crust through those holes. The par baking will still work, it just takes a bit more time without docking."

Baldwin's 5 most controversial pie-baking opinions

Chef Baldwin also shared five "strongly held (and perhaps somewhat controversial) pie-baking opinions": 

1. Your pie is not done unless the crust is well-browned. A lot of people worry about burning the pie, but caramelization equals flavor. An under-baked pie tastes like raw flour and it’s just yucky. If the edge of the crust is baking too quickly, cover it with a foil ring, but please let it bake longer so the rest of the crust can catch up. Most full-size pies, meaning anything between about 8 and 10 inches, will take a full hour or so to bake completely. 
2. Fruit pies are done when the filling starts to bubble over, never before then.  Good pie is inherently messy, so please just put a pan lined with foil underneath to catch the drips and stay the course. If it bubbles over, that is a sign the filling has heated through and the flavors will have melded. 
3. Don’t egg wash your crust! Egg wash bakes more quickly than pie crust. So, if you bake your pie crust enough, your egg wash will be burnt. Conversely, bake using the egg wash as a guide and your crust will not be baked through. See the problem here?  I recommend either egg washing halfway through your bake if you absolutely must or (my preference) wash your crust with heavy cream before baking. This promotes the browning of the crust itself and helps keep it wonderfully flaky. 
4. Bake custard pies at a low temperature for a long time. This allows the custard to bake evenly and prevents cracking. It’s done when it has just a bit of jiggle in the center like Jell-O. 
5. Don’t stress yourself out by trying to make the pie start to finish in one day. Pie dough can be made in advance and frozen. Pie filling can also be made in advance and held for up to a few days. This way you only need to roll your dough, build the pie and bake it in one day. For Thanksgiving, I always bake my pies on Wednesday, the day before the feast. It’s less stressful and the pie is just as delicious after it’s had time to fully cool.