“How do you even make a pie crust?”
I found myself asking this very question over the years anytime I approached making a pie. Up until last summer, I relied on the cookie crust variety of pie or store bought crusts—both frozen and refrigerated. It was in June of last year that I put my foot down. It was high time I learned how to make a pie crust.
What followed was a summer of pies, one right after the other. Lard, shortening, butter; with and without eggs; with and without oil; rolled; pat-in-the-pan… you name it, I tried it. It was always too dry, too crumbly, never just right. I thought I was going to just give up. After all that, pies just might not be in my skill set.
Pies have always mystified me. For all the simplicity of their presentation, pies can be surprisingly delicate and finicky. A media moment I have stored in my brain is from reading Labor Day by Joyce Maynard. It’s a scene where the main character makes a peach pie in the height of summer, which was later recreated in excruciating detail in the film version starring Kate Winslet.
You could say Maynard had as much of a fascination with the construction of peach pie as Winslet does with choosing the most depressing roles. Of all the scenes in that movie, Maynard was hands-on with the peach pie scene, and gave countless interviews waxing poetic about the imperfections of the pie, the intimacy of making a pie, the size of the cast iron skillet, etc.
I think it gave me a complex about pies, like they’re sacred above all else when fully homemade. You can see why I had to get this right.
Then, I read Rick Bragg’s The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma’s Southern Table, and it changed everything for me. Not only do I highly recommend this book, I’ve made just about half the recipes in it with great success every time.
One of those victories was reading a chapter on sweet potato pie and sweet potato cobbler. There, Bragg talked about how his grandmother would make a biscuit dough and roll it thin to use as a pie crust. I remember audibly gasping at this revelation. It had been right in front of me this whole time!
The next thing I knew, there I was patting out a batch of biscuit dough to fit in a cast iron skillet. Ever since then, this has been my go-to for sweet potato or fruit pies. However, there’s a problem with this for other applications—it’s not as tender for a pecan pie. So, it was back to square one.
Every year for John’s birthday since 2022 I’ve made him a sour cream pecan pie. The thing that makes this pecan pie special is not just the sour cream, but the fact that there’s no corn syrup involved. Not that there’s anything wrong with corn syrup, I’ve just always had spotty luck with it, despite its alleged convenience.
The recipe I use comes from a previously discussed work, Southern Cooking to Remember by Kathryn Tucker Windham. Her introduction to the pie chapter is one that sticks in my head as much as the Maynard peach pie rabbit hole.
Like the superstition of saving the tip of the pie to wish on at the end or the reverence for pies among us Southerners. Windham writes:
“Southern cooks take pride in their pies, and whether it is plain chess pie or a fancy gelatin concoction of several layers with a whipped cream topping, they strive for ‘high company quality.’”
So, I thought, if her recipe for sour cream pecan pie is good enough—let’s try the crust recipe.
What happened next was nothing short of miraculous: I made an honest pie crust.
However, in my usual fashion, I diverged from the directions in one particular way. Instead of rolling my dough thin and draping it into a pan, I went for the “pat-in-the-pan” method. This is where you use the heel of your hand to push and spread the dough over the bottom and up the sides of the pan you’re using.
It worked like a charm. It took to the filling, baking, and slicing. Maybe it was a little thick, but you can’t win them all.
Here then, is the standard pie crust recipe:
Standard Pie Crust
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup shortening/lard
6 Tablespoons cold water
Put flour and salt in a large bowl. Cut in shortening until it resembles coarse meal. Sprinkle with cold water evenly on the surface and stir with a fork until it is moist throughout. The dough should come together easily when pressed into a ball.
You can then divide this ball in half and roll thin to 12-inch circles to fit two 9-inch pie pans or make one double-crust pie.
To pre-bake crust (or “unbaked”), line the top of the crust with either foil or parchment paper, filling it with beans or pie weights evenly. Place into an oven preheated to 375 degrees. Bake for about 15 minutes or until the edges start to slightly brown.
Remove from the oven and remove the foil or parchment with the pie weights. You can reserve the weights for future crusts. Prick holes in the bottom of the crust with a fork in a scattered pattern to prevent bubbles.
To fully bake, return to the oven for another 10 minutes or until it is slightly golden and dry in appearance.
Since I used a cast iron skillet, my pie ended up a little more deep dish than a regular pie plate, which worked perfect for the meringue-like topping of the sour cream pecan pie.
Just to stop teasing you with it, I’ll throw it in as well.
One note I will make is I recently substituted the lemon extract with a half teaspoon each of lemon zest and lemon juice. Not that this is necessary, but it lends a fresher quality to the final product.
Sour Cream Pecan Pie
1 cup sugar
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup sifted flour
1/4 teaspoon lemon extract
(or 1/2 teaspoon each lemon zest and juice)
Pinch of salt
2 eggs, separated
Baked pie shell
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup chopped pecans
Add sugar, sour cream, flour, lemon extract, and salt to beaten egg yolks and cook in the top of a double boiler until thick, about 20 minutes. Cool. Pour into a baked pie shell.
Beat egg whites until frothy, then gradually add brown sugar. Continue beating until light and fluffy. Fold in pecans. Spread over pie and bake at 325 degrees until done and slightly brown on top, about 15 minutes.
Don’t have a double boiler? Use a small to medium saucepan filled to about 2 inches with water and place a metal bowl that sits just on top of the pot. There’s your double boiler!
Don’t skimp on the meringue either—you want it silky and airy, though it doesn’t get stiff like a typical meringue.
Let this pie cool about an hour or so before you start digging in. That way it won’t be running off on you.
This version of pecan pie has swiftly become my favorite iteration of this southern staple. It’ll shock you how light this can be. If you put this in the fridge during the summertime, you’ll wonder how you lived without pecan pie in the middle of July.
If something can be as “American as apple pie,” it makes you wonder if something can be as “Southern as pecan pie.” Has someone already coined that? Probably so.
At any rate, it doesn’t get more Southern to me than a fleet of pies at a potluck with miles of meringue.
And for goodness sake don’t tell me you want a “little” piece—those just don’t exist for me.
