Why Blind Bake a Crust?
Some pie and tart recipes have fillings that are not cooked at all, and need to be put into a fully cooked pie shell. Some recipes like quiches recommend partially cooked pie shells because the baking time wouldn’t be long enough to fully cook the dough otherwise. Pre-baking a crust can ensure that your pie or tart crust will be fully baked and browned, and not soggy.
Pre-Baking a Store-Bought Crust
Are you using a homemade pie crust? Or a store bought frozen crust? Most store-bought frozen crusts have much less dough in them than a typical homemade crust, so they’ll brown much faster than a homemade crust. If you are pre-baking a store-bought frozen packaged crust, I recommend following the directions on the package for how to pre-bake that particular crust. Most instructions will have you defrost the crust, prick the bottom of the crust all over with the tines of a fork, and bake at 375°F to 450°F for 10 to 12 minutes. Pre-baking a homemade crust is an entirely different matter, as homemade crusts can have twice as much dough and a higher proportion of fat than store-bought crusts.
How to Blind Bake a Homemade Crust
The most challenging issue you encounter when pre-baking a homemade crust is slumping sides. Homemade crusts especially have a high fat content. The fat melts when heated in the oven, and unless there is a filling to prop up the sides of the pie crust, it can slump. Another issue is billowing air pockets in the center. If you don’t blind bake with weights, or poke holes into the bottom of the crust, the bottom of the crust can puff up. For years I pre-baked crusts the way most people did, about 15 minutes at a high baking temperature using foil or parchment and pie weights, then removing the pie weights and foil, poking the bottom of the crust with the tines of a fork, and continuing to bake for 20 minutes, uncovered. This method works, but I’ve always found it a bit fussy. And even when you poke the bottom of the crust all over with little holes, sometimes you still get air pockets bubbling up at the bottom. I have recently starting using a method I learned from Stella Parks at Serious Eats that consistently gives good results, even with hard-to-blind-bake crusts such as my no-fail sour cream pie crust. Stella advocates lining a frozen crust with foil, filling with pie weights, and then baking at an even 350°F temperature for the entirety of the baking time. No removing of the pie weights mid way, no poking the bottom with a fork. It works! The pressure of the pie weights keeps the bottom of the crust from billowing up, and the sides from slumping too much.
Sugar, Rice, or Beans for Pie Weights
Another thing that Stella recommends is using sugar for pie weights instead of beans or other weights. Why sugar? Because of its small granular size, sugar distributes the weight more evenly against the sides of the crust. You might think the sugar would melt, but it’s not in the oven long enough to reach its melting point. You can actually re-use the sugar in baking. In fact, cooking the sugar this way lightly caramelizes it, giving it more flavor. You can also easily use uncooked rice or dry beans. I’ve extensively tested all three; they all work. I have found that sugar does give consistently better results, and helps keep the sides in place better.
Tips for Blind Baking Success
Use a dough that will pre-bake well. A dough that has a ratio of 1 cup of flour to 4 ounces of fat (1 stick of butter) is a high fat ratio dough and is more likely to slump when pre-baked. A dough that has a ratio of 1 1/4 cups of flour to 4 ounces of fat will have better structure and will slump less. (See our All-Butter Crust recipe.) Roll out your dough a little bit wider than usual, so you can crimp the edges in the pie dish a little taller than usual. If the edges are taller or wider to begin with, they’ll have more room to shrink. Freeze the un-cooked pie crust for at least 30 minutes, preferably an hour, before blind-baking. If the crust is frozen when it goes into the hot oven, the outside edges will have more of a chance to set before the fat melts. Line the crust with heavy duty foil. Heavy duty foil is less likely to tear than regular foil when you are forming it in the crust or when you are removing it and the pie weights. I’ve used parchment, but it doesn’t mold to the edges of the the crust the way foil can. Use sugar for pie weights. Dry beans and rice also work, but sugar works even better, especially if you are using a dough that is higher in fat content like my favorite no-fail sour cream pie crust. Fill the weights to the top, they’ll hold pressure agains the sides of the pie better.
Pie Dough by Hand
Many of our pie recipes call for mixing the ingredients in a food processor. Good news! If you don’t have a food processor, try our handmade pie crust recipe (no special equipment needed). Stick-free heavy duty foil works well for this, to help keep the crust from sticking to the foil when you remove it. You may need two sheets of foil to get full coverage.
