Pastry Recovery

As you may recall, I had a pastry disaster not so long ago. As a result of that blog, my friend Jen Checchio informed me that her mother had a KILLER pie crust recipe that was no fail. Lucky for me, Jen came for a visit from Santa Barbara.

Janet, Jen's Mom scored her recipe from a total old school cook book from 1978...a year after I was born...called Make a Mix Cookery by Karine Eliason, Nevada Harward and Madeline Westover. It is pure simple!

Moist Pie Crust Mix:
5 lbs all purpose flour
2 tablespoons salt
1 (3 lb) can vegetable shortening
3 cups cold water
1/4 cup all purpose flour, if desired

Combine flour and salt in a very large bowl. Mix well. With pastry blender, cut in shortening until evenly distributed. Mixture will resemble corn meal in texture. Add cold water all at once and mix lightly until the flour absorbs all the water and texture resembles putty. If dough is too sticky, sprinkle a little flour over the top and mix until dough barely clings together in the bowl. Divide dough into 10 oblong rolls. Wrap each roll well with plastic wrap and heavy foil. Freeze. use within 12 months makes 10 rolls of crust, enough for 10 double-crust pies or 20 since crust pies.

We used the recipe to make a blueberry gallette so they could prove to me this was the best pie crust EVER. I neglected to get the 'real' recipe for the blueberry gallette because it was so simple. Combine fresh or frozen blueberries with a little bit of flour, sugar and lemon juice. Roll out a ball of Janet's Fabulous pie crust and place the blueberry mixture in the center. Fold up the edges of the pie crust to wrap around blueberries and cook for 20-25 minutes at 350 F.

This turned out pure yummy...so yummy I forgot to take a picture of the final results! The pie crust ROCKS!!!! Thank you so much Jen and Janet! Alex is so excited for a remake of the fruit pies. And we have enough pie crusts to last us for a YEAR!