Pie Dough - Yield: 4 single crust pies or 2 dbl crust pies or approx., 12- 3oz pieces for 6" pie tins
4 Cups (17 oz) All Purpose Flour, unbleached, unbromated
1 3/4 Tblsp Corn Starch
1/2 tsp sea or kosher salt
12 oz Plugra Butter or European Style butter, cut in 1/4" cubes
4 oz lard or vegetable shortening, cut in cubes
4 to 5 or 6 oz of Filtered Water
1. To make crust: Put 1st 3 ingredients in food processor and blend well. Add butter and shortening that is really really cold or frozen and pulse until it is the size of small peas.
Put into mixing bowl. Work with your finger tips a bit to make sure the butter is incorporated into the flour, but you can still see the bits of butter. Add 4 oz of very cold or ice water around the edge of bowl and work in to form a nice dough that will stay together when compressed with your hand. Add a touch more water if necessary. The amount of water will depend on the day, whether humid or dry and how warm you let the butter get.
Its very important to keep the ingredients cold when putting together.
After a nice dough is mixed, place dough on slightly dusted work surface and with the heal of your hand, push the dough away from you to sort of "laminate" or layer the butter with the flour. This helps create a nice flaky crust.
Portion the dough, pat into a disk, wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for a minimum of 1 hour, preferably, over night to let the flour completely hydrate or absorb the moisture. You can also freeze the dough at this point too.
Portion size:
3 oz for a 6" pie tin
8.5 oz for an 8" pie pan
10 oz for a 10 inch pie pan
2. Cheddar mix
8 oz extra sharp white cheddar, grated. (not pre grated stuff!)
8 oz Hellmans mayonnaise, not low fat!
Mix both together. If you have extra, and tomatoes are done for the year, turn the mix into a cheese ball. (Add the weight you have left of the mix, with the same amount of grated cheddar, add some bacon, cooked and chopped, some green onions, chopped and a hint of cayenne pepper.
Form into a ball, put a well in the center and fill with cranberry sauce or red currant jelly and Triscuits! This is also good in an omelets, on a burger, on a baked potato or as a grilled cheese...make extra, you won't regret it!
3. Fresh Basil, lots, julienned
Green Onions (scallions), chopped
Sea or Kosher salt
Black Pepper, Fresh Ground
4. Tomatoes
For the best pie, use local, field grown, summer tomatoes. Low acid tomatoes, like the yellows work well too, maybe mixed with some red tomatoes.
Place in boiling or simmering water for only a couple seconds, then peel, core and thick cut. Squeeze as much juice with your hands, if necessary, out of the tomatoes. (Put juice in pot, reduce by at least 1/2 and use for anything that calls for tomatoes and or juice.)
You can use # 2 tomatoes for the pie, but make sure to cut out imperfections.
5. To Put Pie Together:
Roll dough to fit pie pan. refrigerate or freeze.
Preheat oven to 375 F degrees in convection oven or 400 in conventional oven.
Weight the dough with pie weights or another pie pan on top and blind bake from frozen until golden brown, removing the weights or other pan after about 10 - 15 minutes.
Cool shell. Can be made in advance to this stage. Up to a week, store at room temp.
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. convection or conventional...you need a hot oven!
Put tomatoes that have been squeezed of juice and seeds, overlapping and piled neatly in shell. Make sure to put lots of tomatoes in the shell as they will shrink on the final bake.
Salt and pepper tops of tomatoes, then cover nicely with the basil and green onions.
Put a few scoops of the cheddar mix on top and spread to within an inch or so of the edge of pie plate.
Put pie in preheated oven and bake until nice and golden on top. I like mine a very deep golden color.
Serve warm or cold. Reheat in a 400 oven for approx. 20 minutes.
This is why the pie is so good!
I use ONLY local, field grown, tomatoes, (when nice & ripe they are really easy to peel, no ice bath necessary and field
grown have the best flavor, especially compared to winter or greenhouse grown.)
I use Plugra Butter for the crust as it's just a wonderful butter for baking! With the lard or veg shortening, it is the flakiest
and tastiest crust one could want for!
Fresh Basil is a must. No subs.
I use well aged, 2 year is nice, white cheddar that I grate myself to keep the additives out of the mix. Processors have to
use additives as not to gum up the machines when grating.
I use filtered water to keep the chemicals out.
Unbleached All Purpose Flour is a must, King Arthur is great!
I add the cornstarch to lessen the protein in the flour, in effect, making cake or pastry flour.
The easiest and fastest way to make this pie is, make the dough in advance and freeze it. Make the cheese mix, cut the
green onions, prepare the tomatoes all the day before baking. Then day of, cut the basil and put together.
This is the recipe I've been making since the mid 1980's and it's really good. Yes, you can change the ingredients but it
won't be the same. The tomatoes, goes without saying, are the star of the show so winter tomatoes I don't even think of.
I hope you enjoy as so many of my loyal customers have for the past, close to 40 years!!
Thanks Marcy!!
