Home › Pastry and Pies › Plain Pastry
Plain Pastry
This recipe is for one large pie with top and bottom crust. 2 cups flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1/2 cup shortening cold water Sift together flour, salt and baking powder; add shortening and rub in very lightly with tips of fingers (the less it is handled the better the paste will be). Add cold water very slowly, enough to hold dough together (do not work or knead dough). Divide in halves; roll out one part thin on floured board, and use for bottom crust. After pie is filled roll out other part for top.
A two-crust pie shell from a baking powder company's promotional booklet, which explains the otherwise unusual leavening in a pastry dough. The proportions are sound and the method still works as written.
- The hinge: keep everything cold and barely touchedThe parenthetical warnings are the whole recipe. Rub the fat in only until the largest pieces are pea-sized, add water a tablespoon at a time, and stop the moment the dough coheres. Overworked pastry develops gluten and bakes tough and shrunken.
- Shortening then and nowIn this period "shortening" meant lard or a hydrogenated vegetable fat such as Crisco. Use chilled lard, modern solid shortening, or butter; butter gives more flavour and needs the dough to rest cold before rolling.
- The baking powder is optionalTwo teaspoons in two cups of flour is a lot for pastry, and it is hard to separate its presence from the fact that this is a baking powder company's booklet. It puffs the crust slightly and makes the dough more forgiving, but standard pie pastry uses none. Halving it or leaving it out will not ruin the recipe.
- No oven givenThe recipe stops at rolling out because temperature depends on the filling. A double-crust fruit pie generally starts at 425F for 15-20 minutes to set the bottom, then finishes at 350F for another 30-40 minutes.
- Pan sizeTwo cups of flour makes enough for a 9-inch pie plate with top and bottom crust. If your plate is larger, roll thinner and expect a snug fit.
- Rolling thinAim for about an eighth of an inch. Roll from the centre out, turning the disc rather than flipping it repeatedly, and use as little extra flour on the board as will keep it moving.
- Vent the topThe original does not mention it, but cut steam slits or a few holes in the upper crust before baking, and seal the rim by pressing or crimping, or a juicy filling will force the crusts apart.
The New Royal Cook Book was one of a long line of booklets published by the Royal Baking Powder Company, which built its business on cream of tartar baking powder in an era when American cooks were choosing between that and alum-phosphate powders. Books like this were advertising in the form of a kitchen reference, and baking powder turns up in recipes of all kinds, including pastry. The technique described here, cutting cold fat into flour and adding only just enough water, is the standard American short pastry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and had been printed in essentially this form for decades before Royal put its name on it. What the page really records is the moment when branded chemical leavening became so ordinary that it turned up even in a plain pie crust.