ATLANTA — In her later years, my mother always started her pies with a prepared graham cracker crust. The filling would be a one-bowl affair. Depending on the pie, the ingredients might include chocolate pudding, bananas and vanilla pudding, or a very yellow lemon gel. For several years she only made variations on "yogurt pie"— a blend of low-fat Cool Whip, gelatin and cartons of yogurt, be they boysenberry, coffee or some random mixture I thought of as the Dannon nightmare.
When I successfully excavate older memories, though, I recall a different pie — a blueberry one, bubbly and oozy, with a crisp brown crust that flaked into buttery shards. I was little, so I never learned the recipe. I do remember that it involved wax paper, a rolling pin and a wide-ranging, floury mess that made everyone very happy.
Pie crust is one of those things that you don't learn to make well until someone shows you. Forfeiting such a lesson, you make fruit crisp.
To prepare a crisp, you pour your fruit filling into the bottom of a baking dish and then assemble a crumb topping from rolled oats, brown sugar, flour and soft butter.
I became something of a fruit crisp maven in my parenting years. Blueberry, nectarine, apple, quince — I've crisped them all.
Once a year or so I'd haul out a cookbook and try my hand at a simple butter crust and make a pie. Whatever the recipe, it began with a paean to the twin adjectives of pie crust success: "tender" and "flaky." I'm tender and flaky, I'd think, so shouldn't my crusts follow suit?
Not so fast, the recipe would explain. The tender part comes from not overworking the dough. Once formed, it needs to rest. Then, after you roll the dough, it needs to rest again. Pie dough, apparently, rests more often than a geriatric dog on a walk around the block.
The flaky part comes from keeping the butter in tiny pieces within the dough. When these pieces melt in the oven, they steam, sizzle and create flakes. Every recipe warns you to keep the butter cold lest it just mush into a paste.
So, I'd follow the recipe as best I could until the butter bits were no larger than peas and the whole resembled "coarse meal." What does coarse meal look like? Instant grits? This stuff looked like clumpy sandbox sand.
Next, I would add ice water as instructed, until the dough just adhered into a ball. Much resting, rolling, patching, filling and baking ensued.
Usually I'd end up with a thick, pale, floury shell from which people would surreptitiously excavate the filling.
When it came time for my annual attempt at pie this year, I cracked open the 1997 edition of "The Joy of Cooking." This sometimes-maligned version of the classic cookbook employed a large team of top food experts in different fields to cover its various subjects. People found it too wordy, too gourmet and too little appropriate for the home kitchen.
I've always liked it because the recipes leave so little room for error. When I alighted on a recipe titled Deluxe Butter Flaky Pastry Dough, I found a gift.
By following this wordy recipe, I suddenly understood pie dough — not with my mind but with my hands. Soft, pliable and speckled with bits of butter, it rolled out without ripping and puffed to about three times its thickness in the oven.
Here are key details that make this recipe superior:
A small amount of shortening doesn't interfere with the butter flavor and makes the dough easier to handle.
The instructions on adding the ice water by "cutting" it in with a spatula are brilliant.
Storing the dough as a flattened disc makes it easier to roll out quickly.
Since this is a relatively wet pie dough, it patches easily with a swipe of water if you rip it while rolling.
When it comes time to roll out and assemble the pie, you should have a very cold surface. I use a marble cheese turntable and stick it in the freezer. This helps you add less flour and prevents you from smashing the butter bits.
Both the bottom and top crust should have a good half-inch of overhang. Press both together and fold them up on top of the rim, then crimp.
I'm two pies down and can't wait for the third.
John Kessler writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail: jkessler AT ajc.com