Recipes

[gardenman]

When your dough is mixed and ready to be rolled out, pat it/roll it into a rectangle. Then cut the rectangle into quarters and stack the quarters atop one another brushing off any excess flour, then roll it out as you would normally. By doing this you quadruple the number of layers you would have had in one quick and simple step. One of the cooks in Bon Appetit's test kitchen (Claire Saffetz) uses this technique and I've now tried it with my pie dough and biscuits and it really works well. If your dough has six layers after being ready to roll and you cut it into quarters and stack them atop one another, you've now got 24 (6X4) layers. It takes very little effort to do so. You're not overworking the dough by adding one step to it. It's a quick and easy way to make extra layers in doughs without overworking the dough or doing lots of folds.

[Mothertrucker]

Thanks! This is very much like the technique for making puff pastry or Mille Feuille..I will definitely try it for pies!

[Kardi]

Neat trick!  I’ve always found that the less you handle pie crust dough, the more flaky and tender it will be.

[gardenman]

With things like puff pastry, you try to keep the solid sheet of butter trapped inside so you more roll and fold the dough with refrigeration between each roll and fold. With biscuits and pie dough you don't really have that solid sheet of fat separating the layers. That means you can cut it and stack the pieces with no real fear of the fat leaking out. There's very little in the way of extra handling and you get four times the layers and flakiness using this technique. It's pretty neat and easy. I've done it with both pie dough and biscuits (just yesterday with the biscuits) and there's a noticeable improvement in the flakiness you get.

[Pook]

My mother used to pat dough out in a circle then fold it over 3 times then roll it .  She never said why she did it.

[aroc3435]

@gardenman Thank you for sharing this tip.  I'm always trying to perfect my "from scratch" pie dough and the "heavy baking" holiday marathon is fast approaching.