What is THE BEST crust for a pumpkin pie?

Butter, Butter, Butter.!

Seriously, though, shortening has no flavor, it just makes the dough easier to work with.

I dived into this topic a few years ago, did you know there are actually 3 different types of butter crust?

What are you talking about? How many kinds of pie crusts are there?

Just a regular pie crust.

If you're not great at making pie crusts, do the graham cracker crust or a pressed / no roll pie crust.

I think sablée would be good with pumpkin pie, and you?

R1 I know about cheap supermarket shortening but I have access to a butcher's pork lard shortening.

R3 see R2.

That's one of the grossest looking things I've ever seen OP. Do you Americans actually eat that stuff? It looks like dog food.

I have tired this one, really great flavor, also a great baking site. The guy who started it was going through some medical issues and taught himself everything he could about baking to keep himself busy. He recovered and moved on but he's paid for the site to stay up for the next 10 years because he had so many fans. Just no new stuff. But honestly there is so much on that site, I don't know what's left he didn't cover. Great for beginners.

Squash pie is eaten all over North and South America, hunty. Sweet potato as well.

Gross R8.

Thanks R7. I never heard of some of the ingredients he puts in, and the technique. But I'm bored and willing to try it. It seems promising.

I'm actually quite surprised Greg hasn't done a thread on Thanksgiving already.

American here. I can see why people think pumpkin pie is odd and unappetizing.

However, it is basically a custard pie with some pumpkin puree in it.

[quote]I'm actually quite surprised Greg hasn't done a thread on Thanksgiving already.

I’m hoping he’s working on a Thanksgiving Spectacular. A full three weeks off no less than 5 recipes a day. With pics and interactive graphics.

I don’t like pumpkin pie. I like sweet potato pie, pecan pie, and buttermilk pie.

I’m VERY southern.

Alton Brown adds a shot of vodka to the pie crust instead of some of the water. The theory is, the alcohol bakes off leaving more of the butter to do it's thing as well as making the crust more tender by breaking down the gluten somewhat.

Not southern, but pecan pie is definitely #1 for Thanksgiving. My extended family insists on multiple pumpkin pies and maybe 1 pecan pie. The facts speak for themselves. There's always way more leftover pumpkin pie than pecan pie.

My family also eats that canned cranberry "sauce."

Last time I spent Thanksgiving with them, I made a nice Brussels sprouts salad (cooked) with blue cheese and other things. Not many people ate it. They like the same old stuff. One of my cousins even started making that stupid green bean casserole when none of us grew up eating it.

I LOVE pecan pie. You bitches are making me hungry now.

R15, I feel your pain. Since my sister is kinda now the family matriarch, we have to do things HER way or not at all. And she’s a total beyotch when it comes to thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. She yelled at me for suggesting trying a new thanksgiving recipe. I’m just so sick of all brown and starch thanksgivings and I dared to suggest a green vegetable side dish and she told me “I DON’T WANT NON-TRADITIONAL THANKSGIVING DISHES!” 😳

We have one compromise. Macho peas. It’s a dish from a chain restaurant, Nando’s, and it just cooked green peas, mashed with finely chopped up mint, parsley, a little butter and peri-peri hot sauce.

That’s it. That’s the only thing that isn’t brown we’re allowed to have. And my whole family is weird. We’ll make that probably ten times a year anyway so it’s not even very special. But it’s, in her world, now a traditional thanksgiving side. 🤷🏻

I’m related to a bunch of fucking weirdos.

Unfortunately it's a legume and not a real green vegetable.

Mama's little baby loves shortnin', shortnin'.

That's not a pie in your picture OP, a pie has a lid on it, it's a flan and that's always shortcrust pastry!

Pumpkins are squashes, right? Anyway, I am a bit over pumpkin pie and its cousins. It is probably because of the proliferation of pumpkin spice in coffee, donuts. and a million other things.Other than pecan and apple, which I still like, what are some other good holiday pies?

I use a Graham Cracker crust. Graham Crackers and butter. That is all.

Where's Greg?

I've made crusts with butter flavored Crisco and with all butter. I can't tell the difference. And the Crisco is cheaper. If you do them right they both make nice flaky crusts. If you're using a good food processor to make your crust I do suggest forming the Crisco into a shape like a stick of butter and putting it in the freezer until it's almost frozen solid. Then you can cut it up in slices like butter and that will give you a better distribution with your flour in the processor resulting in a much flakier crust.

Pumpkin pie is how fat whores eat their one vegetable of the year.

[quote] Where's Greg?

Good morning!

Try Alton Brown’s gingersnap crust.

That's a helpful suggestion, Greg. I will probably try that crust.

Can't say I care much for Alton Brown's pumpkin recipe, though. While he does use dark brown sugar just as I do, he precooks his pumpkin puree (WTF?), and only uses nutmeg to season it.

My mom made lemon meringue pies for holidays. Her pie crusts were very good and flaky. She used Crisco, no food processor. She used a manual pastry dough cutter.

My mom isn’t a baker - the only pie she ever made was chocolate cream pie - and I have no complaints.

Also - Famous Chocolate Wafer cake. Mmmmm

Nice, PoisonedDragon.

I’m not a fan of pumpkin pie (but I like sweet potato pie), so I can’t help you with a recipe.

Let us know how you like Alton’s gingersnap crust.

PoisonedDragon, we’re I to make a pumpkin pie, I would try Sally’s recipe.

I very much like her pies.

PoisonedDragon, this recipe for pecan praline pumpkin pie also looks light it might be quite good.

The crust in that photo at R33 looks awful. Looks like a layer of raw dough.

The R33 crust does not look like it was prebaked. If you don't prebake your crust the bottom is always going to be soggy if there's much moisture in the filling. Personally I also use a pastry brush to paint a lite layer of egg white on the inside of my home made crusts if the filling is going to be especially wet. That helps seal it so any wet filling can't soak it.

Okay, now that I'm sponsored by Google I find that yet again we share a common language in name only, and that's in the UK let alone broader afield:

Pie - Enclosed with pastry sweet or savoury e.g. Apple pie, Pork pie, Steak and Kidney pie, Chicken and Leak pie or some other medium e.g. potatoes with Shepherds pie or Fish pie. Tart/flan - Sweet or savoury dish open with pastry on the bottom e.g. Strawberry tart, Apple tart, Custard tart, Lemon tart, Red Onion and Goats Cheese tart. Quiche - Savoury egg based with pastry base of which only the Quiche Lorraine qualifies, technically all other variations are flans e.g. Stilton Cheese and Broccoli Quiche

So ignore me with my pie vs flan question, we can't even agree on what equates to being a tart or a flan in the UK, let alone question the US use of pie for an open topped dish.

That is a very good idea, R35.

Thank you!

Oh for crissakes, I mentioned the eggwhite wash in my opening gambit.

OP you should definitely dock your crusts or line them with parchment (crumple it into a ball first so it will fit down in the crust easily) and use some sort of weights (dry beans is best if you don't have pie weights) to fill the crust up. That will keep it from bubbling.

[quote] Oh for crissakes, I mentioned the eggwhite wash in my opening gambit.

Mary! Sometimes people miss it the first time.

Vodka in the crust inhibits gluten formation.

Pate sucree is the best answer. Because it doesn’t need to be blind baked, a regular slightly-sweet pie crust will be the best option.

Who cares R23?

I make a pumpkin chiffon pie that is fabulous. Lighter and fluffier than the usual pumpkin pie served with whipped cream, naturally.

Mmm hmm, that sounds wonderful R43! Could you post the recipe?

Frankly I have never found any pie crust that can stand up to a custardy filling. Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook showed the filling could be baked in a separate glass pie pan and then somehow slid whole into the baked pie crust.

I remember David Rosengarten making a coconut cream pie that way. Baked the crust separately. The pie filling was cooked / set up in a separate pie pan. Cool off the filling part, then slide into the crust.

I love baking and am actually pretty good at it. The only problem is I end up eating it all myself within 2-3 days, tops.

Thank you for your helpful contribution R47.

[quote]Can't say I care much for Alton Brown's pumpkin recipe, though. While he does use dark brown sugar just as I do, he precooks his pumpkin puree (WTF?)

Yeah, not crazy about the filling of his pumpkin pie, but there is a gem of knowledge in his precook method. Basically cooking it for just few minutes droves off a lot of the water in the canned filling in the form of steam. So when you actually bake the pie, you don't get that cracking in the center that sometimes shows up. That's actually from too much water not the other way around. I do it all the time comes out perfect every time.

Costo has the best store bought Pumpkin Pie. Has a cult fallowing. Their recipe is top secret and I know for a fact from someone that worked there that the crusts are made there not in some factory.

Costco's baked goods are generally very good. Last time I had to pick up a quick dessert I got one of their fruit tarts and it was delicious. The pastry cream filling was excellent.

I know all of you Fat Whores don’t even bother with baking a crust. You just eat the pumpkin filling out the can, followed by a squirt of canned whipped cream in your mouth.

I use ghee for a lighter, firmer crust.

I have never used canned pumpkin ever. Thankfully where I live the fall brings a bounty of wonderful sugar pumpkins. These are very small pumpkins. You can't use the big Halloween pumpkins for pie. It would be horrible as the flesh is too fibrous. Sugar pumpkins have a flesh that is more like that of a cantaloupe. You only need to put them in the oven at 400° until they're nice and soft then scrap out the flesh and blend it until it's smooth. The resulting pie is infinitely better than one using processed pie filling.

Forget butter. Forget shortening. Use LARD for the best pie crust ever.

Clarified butter? Never heard of that.

Chocolate Cream Pie

R55 my great-grandmother was famous for her pies and melt in your mouth crust using lard. It is the best. Those pies fed her family when her husband was killed when widows didn't have benefits and women didn't have careers.

True lard is very old school, it has that porky flavor I find unflattering to things like pies. Save the lard for things like fried chicken. Butter is the only way to go for light and sweet things like pies and crusts.

Today's lard is ultra-processed and does not taste of anything. Custard pie crusts, like pumpkin, have to crisp up while baking. Lard does this.

If you're averse to using lard, blind bake a shortening or butter crust for ten minutes before adding the filling. It will not be as flaky as a lard crust, but it should bake through.

I've tried the alcohol instead if water method and had okay results using half water/half vodka. But I always go back to lard crust because it's easy and reliably good.

I sometimes like to use a combination of lard and butter for a really good piecrust.

Where do you find Lard? Sounds dumb, I know.

Stores have it over near the meat section usually.

My favorite crust is the easy pie dough on serious eats. I love that it gives an exact measurement of water. There’s this old myth that moisture in the air affects how much water you need to add. I do it in a stand mixer instead of a food processor because there’s so many fiddly parts to clean. You could probably do it by hand too, if you mix soft butter with the flour and let it harden in the fridge, before adding the second phase of flour with a pastry cutter. For pumpkin I wouldn’t prebake the crust. It comes out too dry. I like the raw layer of dough, I suppose because that’s how it’s always been done.

I buy a one-pound brick of Farmer John lard at Ralphs (Kroger) once a year to make pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas. This lard is ultra processed and has no flavor. (It's in the aisle with vegetable shortening and bottled oils.) I store it in the refrigerator. I toss the leftover lard in January because it absorbs every odor that a refrigerator might have.

Lard has to be cold to make the pebbly pie crust dough. My mom used to freeze butter then use a grater to shred it to make pie crusts. And she refrigerated the dough between steps. It takes a couple hours to make pie crust that way, though.

R64 Yuck on the raw dough!

My mom made her crusts with Crisco and they were very good. The key is to have enough salt, I think.

I like those little Chinese custard tarts you can sometimes get at Chinese restaurants. So good. I think the crusts are made with lard.

It's a 2-dough crust, R66. Inner and outer.

R65 it’s not literally raw, more like a boiled/steamed texture from the filling cooking against it. Another problem with pre baking the crust is that it will be over cooked by the time the custard is finished.

I've always just made a butter pie crust and poured the custard filling in, but a dinner guest brought a home-made pumpkin pie the other day to a dinner party I gave, and he blind-baked with egg wash. I have to say it was a much better texture than the traditional pumpkin pie, in which the bottom crust is always slightly soggy. The egg-wash blind-baked crust had a nice bite to it. It didn't seem overcooked to me either. I'm not sure how he achieved that. Maybe just briefly blind baked before? I think I'll look online and see what is recommended to get that sort of crust.

Fun Fact: Crisco was Invented in 1901 by German scientists as a lubricant for submarines. Then sold to the Proctor & Gamble then gave the American Heart Association $1.7 million dollars for an ad campaign to promote the health benefits of cooking with "Crisco." The campaign stated that "Crisco" is a healthier alternative to animal fats found in dairy products.” 😂😂😂

R69, I blind bake it sometimes. It's not very long, like 10 minutes just enough to dry out and develop some very light color. With pie weights of course. It's good, but honestly, I am one of those weird people that like the soft crust on the bottom portion of the pie. Blind baking kind of minimizes that. Also, blind baking can make the edges of the pie crust over cook so you have to cover them with foil while leaving the center exposed.

Ginger snap crust (pressed) sounds good.

I’ll post a recipe for the Chinese egg custard tarts later.

Lard and butter mixed makes the best pie crust.

Greg, many thanks for the pie suggestions at R32 and R33, but I didn't mean to imply that I lack a pumpkin pie recipe. (A couple of years ago, I was intrigued by Sally's Baking Addiction, but couldn't quite commit to putting black pepper in the custard.) I'm rather fond of my own recipe, with its proprietary spice/sugar balance. Here's mine, which I've shared here before (on the '𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐬𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐃𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡' thread, reply 17):

Get a glass deep dish pie plate, and unroll an instant pie crust onto it, by Pillsbury or some such. Pre-heat your oven to 425°F.

In a mixing bowl, combine:

3 eggs

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 cup Dark Brown Sugar

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1 29oz can Pure Pumpkin (just Pumpkin, not 'Pumpkin Pie Mix')

1 12oz can Evaporated Milk

______________________________ _________________________

Blend with a mixer and pour into the unbaked pie crust. Place in the pre-heated oven for 15 minutes, then reduce oven temperature to 375°F, and bake for another 45 minutes. When a knife inserted into the custard comes out clean, it's ready. Cool on the countertop, then refrigerate. Serve with a dollop of whipped topping. Enjoy!

The black pepper thing is not common in pumpkin pie. However White Pepper is. I have tried it both ways and it dose taste better. My theory is makes the ginger which normally has some heat to it come forward more. Fresh ginger vs ground ginger are not the same. You lose that punch fresh ginger has so it makes total sense adding a pinch of white pepper sort of brings that back.

And by a pinch I mean 1/16 of a teaspoon. 1/8 would really be pushing it.

Marie Callender's ready made crust

R7 that recipe is interesting but I think I never could manage it. The part where the butter flakes are made I can see mine not thin and melting. Actually, I found it intimidating. I’m sure I could never get it right.

If you can find it, Spice Hunter has BY FAR the best pumpkin pie spice blend.

Most pumpkin pie spice blends contain nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, mace, ginger and allspice in varying proportions.

But what a different blend for Spice Hunter:

Cinnamon, ginger, lemonpeel, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, star anise, fennel, black pepper.

Like night and day.

I like to use a spiced crust that i found years ago for a Walnut Pie. I think it's pretty good but others might think pumpkin pie is already spiced up, so wouldn't think that would be appropriate.

But i do. it's not an overly sweet or overly spicy crust.

I double the spices, yeah, I don't actually like the taste of squash. There I said it.

You don’t like zucchini or cucumber?

I'm not R81 but I hate zucchini and like cucumbers. Cucumbers are crispy and refreshing. Zucchini and other squashes are bland and mushy to me. Texture is a big issue for me. I don't like eggplant or mushrooms for the same reason and not enough flavor to overcome the nasty texture.

Plants in the cucurbit (gourd) family include melons, pumpkins, squash and cucumbers. Cucumbers are not squash, but they are gourds.