The continuing saga of the crust of pie

Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, our schedule was thrown off a little and instead of making the banana cream pie and accompanying crust yesterday, my idea was to delay banana cream until next week and instead make the pie crust for the pumpkin pie tonight and then bake the pie in the morning. (I bought a pie crust at the grocery store as a backup in case mine was a complete failure) Prior to this year I had always made the pumpkin pie recipe with a store bought crust. When I pulled the recipe out this evening, I realized that what it actually says is "Fill pie plate that has been lined with pastry". Lined with pastry sounds like the crust is not baked first. So I pulled out all the pie crust recipes in the box, and found that the crusts for the cream pies always give instructions to bake the crust first, but the strawberry pie crust is described as a pastry dough and is not cooked until the filling is in. There is no specific crust for the pumpkin pie, but due to her use of the word 'pastry' in both the pumpkin and strawberry pie recipes, that is the one I'm going to go with. Which means that I won't be making it till tomorrow morning.

Still being a little intimidated by the whole process, especially the 'cutting in' of the lard, I grabbed the Better Homes cookbook and took a look at a book on a hook... No, wait, that's the Nook! (Sorry, I couldn't resist. And for those of you who are now thinking I have completely lost my mind, that was a quote from Dr. Seuss' One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.) Anyway, Better Homes says to use a pastry blender (which I don't have) to cut the lard into the flour until the pieces are the size of small peas. I'm sure I can manage that with a knife. Then I read their "pastry know how" section, which says, oh so helpfully, "Measure accurately. Too much flour makes pastry tough, too much shortening makes pastry greasy and too much water makes pastry tough and soggy." Wonderful! What a confidence builder when I am using recipes that almost always call for "1 to 1 1/2 cups flour" or "1/2 to 1 cup lard". Measure accurately? Easy for them to say.

As a fail safe measure, I have decided that since the pumpkin pie recipe actually makes enough filling for two pies, I will make one in the store bought crust, and one with my attempt at crust. That way, if I fail and wind up with tough or greasy or soggy crust, we'll still have dessert.

Happy Thanksgiving!