Thanksgiving

[writerkit]

Thanksgiving! She posts, like, a week late, but things keep interrupting. My usual Thanksgiving didn't announce they were hosting one until, like, two days before this year, by which point I had found other plans. I'm now contemplating the relationship between the traditional etiquette I taught myself so I would have Concrete Social Rules before the autism diagnosis, and modern polyamory. In circles where polyamory is common, you either need to have a very, very Ask culture, such that you can freely ask which members of your polycule you can and can't bring with you to the thing-- particularly in nonheirarchical poly or non-coupled poly where the person issuing the invitations might not be able to tell from the outside who the primary is, or *if* there's a primary-- or an understanding on the part of everyone issuing invitations that they need to be very specific about who's being invited, which is much harder in the modern world when you might be inviting someone to something without knowing anything about their partners or even if they have any. I think my generation is going to have to move more to an ask culture simply because lifestyles are so much less homogenized now; it's much harder for one set of rules to tie everything together the way they have in the past. And I think traditional etiquette doesn't apply as much as it used to across the board; it's no longer considered Deeply Rude to mention you did a thing that someone else wasn't invited to-- I was brought up in a world where people should never know things they weren't invited to *existed*, because no one would ever mention such things to them. Even something as small as "I had so-and-so over for dinner".

On the other hand, how much of the modern tradition of "I'm having a giant potluck and inviting my entire social circle" is modern hosting shifting and how much is trying to apply that rule in an age of social media where you really can't count on your social circle not finding out you had a party and didn't invite some of them?

But all of that's a tangent because actually today we are discussing baking.

Thanksgiving had the rather amusing episode of a number of people realizing the day before that desserts were looking a bit thin and deciding to bring a dessert in addition to what they'd already brought, so there was a *lot* of dessert available. I made pecan pie, as is my tradition no matter where I'm going for Thanksgiving. benign_cremator expressed that this was not the best iteration of this dish I've ever done, and he's quite right-- when I'm not exhausted and dealing with new routines and baking far too late at night, I play around with it, do things like adding maple syrup or experimenting with spices, and look at the pie crust recipe before I do it. (Honestly I really need to get MathFriend-- who lacks a DW username-- to teach me his from-memory pie crust recipe, so I have something in my back pocket for when I am trying to make a Company Dessert.)

Which brings me to the pie crust recipe. The recipe for the pie *filling* is longstanding, and while I generally only do this once a year it's not difficult even in the years when I am conducting experiments on it. Pie crust, however, is something I don't have a standard for-- or, well, I *do*, but only for savory pies. The yeasted almost-bread crust I use for meat pies doesn't work for sweet pies. Also I am trying to experiment with my cookbook collection... which I probably also should not do while exhausted or for a company dessert, although in a fascinating turnaround it took gluten-free quite well, significantly better than it took with regular flour.

Anyway, I was very tired and was going "Which of my cookbooks will have a good pie crust recipe?" I forget why but I was somewhat dissatisfied with the options offered in How to Bake Everything, so I pulled out Cooking for Geeks, which I have actually never used before. This was... not a great plan, as it turns out, because it's not written in a way that's functional if you can't compensate for the ways the recipe is poorly written. It starts out offering a comparison of ingredients in Joy of Cooking versus Martha Stewart's pie crust recipe to discuss error tolerances in measuring. *Just* the ingredients; not either book's instructions. Joy calls for shortening, so I used Martha Stewart's version... which I suspect is more functional in her book, with her instructions. *This* book tells you to measure and combine all the ingredients for either one of the recipes. Yes, you read that right, all of them. Including the water. Then chill, then pulse in the food processor or if you don't have a food processor use a pastry blender.

I have *never* encountered a pie crust recipe that wants you to add the water before you add the butter, unless it's asking you to combine water and butter separately and add to dry ingredients (which is rare). It's going to be so much more difficult to cut in the butter if you add the water first. Even with the "chill all the things" step. (And in fact the Martha Stewart recipes I've found online don't suggest doing this; they are normal pie crust recipes written by someone who understands how food works.) I caught that it was asking you to do this and cut the butter in first, because I am an experienced baker who can compensate for these things, but it really makes me skeptical of the rest of the book, particularly since the pie crust didn't even come out that well.

Well, okay, as previously stated, the gluten-free pie came out extremely well for gluten-free pie. The one with gluten came out kind of sandy and overly crumbly.

Later in the book it goes on a long tirade about how instant yeast is *obviously* superior to active dry yeast and you should always use instant yeast unless you have some special reason for active dry because with active dry yeast you *always* have to proof it and that adds time and an extra step, and... I have many, many issues with that line of reasoning. (Also you don't always have to proof active dry yeast. I have made plenty of bread recipes where it just goes straight into the dough without the mix-with-water-and-sugar step and still comes out fine.)

Comments

[rthstewart]

I am very whut with regard to the pie crust. I now have a standard pie crust recipe that is all butter, flour and salt, and then you add the ice water, and chill. I do it in a mixer and then dump it on the granite counter and fold it over, with a scraper, using a spray bottle to dampen any dry spots, until I get a nice cohesive mound where you can see the layers all folded (King Arthur flour has a good blog on it)
for double crust: 363 g of ap flour, 3 g salt, 196 g of butter cut into small cubes, 133-148 g of ice water plus more as needed.
Smoosh butter, flour and salt together until it's like cracker crumbs, add water until it holds together, proceed as usual.

As for the ask culture, polycule, and so forth, I admit these nuances did not occur to me and I'll want to be more sensitive to them as a hostess going forward. Granted my philosophy tends to be, oh you have a friend with no plans? Please bring them too!

[writerkit]

I don't think I've ever done pie crust by that method; I will have to experiment. Of course, it's also only recently that I have lived somewhere with a kitchen scale.

[jducoeur]

Doesn't really help with gluten-free, but if you sometimes do glutinous crusts: do you know the Cooks' Illustrated recipe? They invented the "vodka crust" about fifteen years ago, and it was successful enough that many people have convinced themselves that the recipe is a century old. (Which AFAICT it isn't.)

[writerkit]

Gluten-free is an accommodation for someone else; I'm fine with gluten. I did not know of this vodka crust, though I may have to acquire some vodka and experiment now. (I don't normally keep vodka around; it's not drinkable and until now I didn't think it had baking applications.)