All you need to do is preheat your oven to the desired temperature and then coat the bottom and sides of your pie crust with meringue powder. But don’t fear. While there’s a large variety of different pie weights (see how they’re typically used) available today for the home baker, there are plenty of substitutes that you can use if you’re in a hurry, and different techniques you can use for blind baking. This will help to prevent the crust from shrinking or becoming misshapen during the baking process. Commercial Pie Weights Carefully position your pastry over your baking tin. Gentle press it into the tin, pushing it all the way into the corners. This is especially important if you’re making something like a quiche because it needs to stay contained within its own boundaries during cooking time otherwise it may end up leaking over into another dish while they cook together inside your oven! Meringue Powder

This is entirely understandable, as once the filling is baked to our liking, we have to remove the pie to prevent it from burning or over-cooking. Baking Blind" redirects here. For the cookery project for visually impaired people, see Penny Melville-Brown. Pie shell after blind bakingBlind baking is the process of pre-baking a pie crust or tart shell before its filling is added. It gives the crust a head-start over the filling, and gives you more control over how the crust is baked. While you may have put it down to the filling itself soaking into the crust (which isn’t entirely inaccurate), the problem is usually that the crust itself is under-baked. These are basically just round little ceramic discs with holes in them for air circulation during baking (just like real pie weights).

Here we have two related problems, both solved by blind baking. By pre-baking a pie crust we make sure that it is fully baked and crisp before we add our wet fillings. You may have come across this term in recipe books time and time again, but still you’re not quite sure what it means. Or perhaps you’ve tried it once or twice, and still haven’t got that perfect pie crust that you were hoping for. They can be used in place of traditional blind baking beans by simply placing them on top of your pie dough before baking.This method has the added advantage of allowing you to invert the two forms so that you can bake them upside down on a baking tray. While the form holds the bottom of the pastry in place, gravity works in your favor by pulling the sides of the crust down, protecting against shrinkage. Some easy alternatives for pie weights include dried rice, beans, or corn, steel balls, metal chains, sugar, and a second, smaller pie form. We’ll take a look at each of these in more detail below. If using pie weights, you may need to adjust how many you use in proportion to their weight. Steel or ceramic balls will likely be heavier than dried beans, so you may need to use several layers to compensate. Follow the advice above and you should be baking perfect pie crusts every time, no matter your choice of pie weights!

Pour your baking beans/dried beans/dried pasta on top. This will help weigh it down and stop the pastry from puffing up when it’s baking. One problem with blind baking is that without a filling to hold down the pastry, the dough can puff up as steam produced during baking gets trapped in the dough’s gluten structure. This can lead to an uneven crust, and over- or under-baked areas.Make sure that your pie weights are evenly distributed over the surface of the crust, and pushed out to the sides. Keeping the weights in an oven bag can make removal of them easier.

While it may sound like an exercise in extreme adventure baking, don’t let its peculiar name put you off. Blind baking is actually a rather simple process to master once you understand the reasons for doing it and the steps involved. Other fillings may require only a short period of baking or a lower temperature than the crust, and so the crust will need a head-start if it is to become crisp. Custard pies for example can curdle if baked for too long. Although this is a very alternative way to bake a pie, meringue powder can actually be a great substitute for pie weights. Whichever method of blind baking you choose to use, some general advice can help you achieve even greater results.

Some people swear by this method, but it doesn’t work for all types of pastry, and it isn’t foolproof. It is certainly not advisable for pies with wet fillings, as these can seep through the holes and then into or under the crust itself. While you might be able to get away with a slightly soggy base, serving up a pie where the crust still feels like dough or which doesn’t even hold together is inexcusable. It is worth making the effort therefore to learn and practice blind baking when it is called for in a recipe, to guarantee great results every time. How do I blind bake? So you’ve decided to make your family a delicious summer fruit tart, or take advantage of the fall’s harvest by baking a sweet pumpkin pie, but there’s just one snag… the recipe calls for blind baking the crust and the addition of pie weights, and that’s not something you keep hanging around your kitchen.