Pumpkin Pie

I love pumpkin pie! I baked one today, why wait until Thanksgiving? I wanted to share the recipe I use, my process for par baking pie crust, and of course a bunch of pictures (and jiggly pumpkin pie doneness-checking gifs). I’ve been in a years long war with flour, butter, and water, trying to figure out how to get a nice pie crust with a pumpkin pie. I do this thing where every year, I have to try to remember any changes I made to the steps I follow to par bake a pie crust from the previous year, because I didn’t write anything down. I figure if I take the time to write this out, it’ll be easier for me to keep track of. Scroll to the end if you just want to see the pictures. If you have secret tips for pie crust, please share!

Pie Dough Recipe

This makes dough for a single crust 9 inch pie.

Ingredients (Dough)

  • 150g all purpose flour
  • 1 stick unsalted butter
  • 1/4 cup ice water (ish)
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1/2 tsp salt

Method (Dough)

  1. Prepare 1 cup of water with some ice cubes. You will only use around 1/4 cup of this, adding more as needed.
  2. Combine flour, sugar and salt in a bowl and mix
  3. Cube butter, just from the fridge, and put into flour, coating each cube with flour
  4. With your hands, smoosh each cube of butter. Continue to work butter into flour until butter is roughly pea sized. You want the butter to remain cold and solid (not greasy), so work quickly. Put the bowl in the freezer for 5 minutes if you need to.
  5. Add 1/4 cup of water and mix gently with your hands. Add more water, one tbsp at a time, aiming for the dry bits, and mix until dough barely stays together when you squeeze it in your hands.
  6. Knead a few times gently in a folding motion until dough comes together. Form into a disc.
  7. Wrap with clingwrap and chill in the fridge for at least an hour, preferably longer.

Method (Pie Crust Preparation)

  1. Coat dough lightly in flour and place on a floured surface.
  2. Roll out dough to a couple inches wider than the diameter of your pie dish.
  3. Transfer into pie dish and trim so there is roughly one inch of dough hanging off the edge of the dish.
  4. Fold hanging edge into the pan and crimp with fingers and thumb.

Method (Par Bake Pie Crust)

  1. Place dough into freezer while preheating oven to 425.
  2. Dock pie dough with a fork all over.
  3. Line dough with parchment paper and fill with beans, rice, pie weights, whatever.
  4. Bake for 20 minutes with pie weights in, then remove them, dock again, and bake for 5 minutes more. Crust doesn’t need to be fully cooked, just looking dry and just set. There may be some air pockets, but they should deflate in a minute or two as the crust cools slightly. Pop air pockets and reshape the dough gently with a spatula if needed.

Method (Pumpkin Pie)

While par baking my pie crust, I mix the pumpkin pie filling. I’ve been following this recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction for the past few years and quite like it.

Pictures and Notes

I’ve spent many years trying to perfect my method for par baking pie crust to be used in pumpkin pie. I’ve not quite perfected it, but I’m able to pretty consistently get satisfactory results doing what I detailed above. Another thing to note is that I use a metal pie dish, I find that gets a better crust than the glass dishes I used previously. I’ve tried rolling and shaping the dough in the pie dish the day before and leaving it in the freezer over night. This ended disastrously, the pie ended up completely stuck to the dish, would not recommend. I’ve found baking the pie dough from chilled gives better results. I don’t know why.

Pie dough ingredients Pie dough ingredients

Cubed butter in dry ingredients Cubed butter mixed into the dry ingredients

Smoosh the butter into dry ingredients Smooshing the butter like this

Pea sized butter pieces This is the size the butter is when I consider it “done”

Shaped dough disc Dough disc ready to go into the fridge

Ready to roll the dough out Ready to roll out the chilled dough on this neat baking mat my parents got me for Christmas a few years ago

Rolled pie dough I roll the dough to about this big. Also, this is the metal pie dish that has worked well for me

Trimming the edges How did I take this picture if both my hands are working on the dough…?

Crimping the edges POV dough crimping

Docked and chilled dough Docked and chilled pie dough

Weighed down with beans Oh to be weighed down with beans

First 20 mins of baking Remove the weights after 20 mins of baking, the dough will look soggy but you gotta trust the process

Par baked pie crush Bake for another 5 minutes until it looks more dry and just set. I probably could have let this go a few more minutes

Pie filling ingredients Pumpkin pie filling ingredients, just dump all this into a bowl and mix

Not done at all Check the pie at 50 minutes and every 5 minutes after that. This was 50 minutes, clearly not done as the center is still liquidy

Not quite done Getting closer, but the center is still not set

Pie is done baking Center is barely set and pie is a fairly uniform consistency, this is ready to pull from the oven. The oven light likes to turn on and off on its own.

Fully baked pie Pie will be a bit puffy right when you pull from the oven, but it will settle down like this after a couple minutes. Let cool at room temp for a couple hours then chill in the fridge

Slice of pumpkin pie The finished product!