The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten [209]
The kitchen timer beeped. I checked the pie and decided to let it brown a few minutes more. I turned back to the television. The poignancy of the bathing-suit competition was sadly drawing to a close. At this point in the Miss Teen USA Pageant, I had expected a Cherry Pie Contest, my only reason for tuning in to this antiquated and sexist ritual. I watched in vain. Wichita, Kansas, from which the Miss Teen USA Pageant was broadcast, was once a major world capital of homemade pie. Shouldn’t today’s teen role models be as adept at pie-making as they are at concupiscent display? But now Wichita seems nothing more than the world capital of the Miss Teen USA Pageant. I would happily serve as pie teacher to next year’s contestants.
In theory, American piecrust is extremely simple. Most often it follows a three-two-one formula—three parts flour (by weight), two parts shortening, and one part water, plus a little salt and sometimes a little sugar.
Nearly every baker or scientist who writes about pie seems to subscribe to what you might call the Nasty Gluten Theory of Flaky, Tender, Crisp American Piecrust. Wheat flour is mainly starch, plus 7 to 15 percent protein and 10 percent moisture. The two main proteins are glutenin and gliadin. When you stir water into flour, the glutenin and gliadin come alive, connecting with the water and with each other to form gluten, a tough and stretchy substance that, when kneaded or stirred or stretched, forms the elastic network that gives structure to bread, but turns pastry and cakes tough and rubbery.
Piecrust recipes have you go to elaborate lengths to avoid developing gluten. They warn you to use as little water as possible (without water, gluten cannot form); to mix and handle the dough very gently (without manipulation, gluten strands cannot join into networks); to use low-protein pastry flour or all-purpose flour (which has less gliadin and glutenin); and to rest the ball of dough before rolling it out (which relaxes the stretchiness of the gluten, though it also allows the water to reach particles of flour that had remained dry and therefore without gluten).
The ingredient in piecrust that combats gluten is shortening—fat. By coating the little particles of flour, shortening waterproofs the protein, prevents the water from reaching the gliadin and glutenin, and thus makes it impossible for them to combine and form gluten. And if they do combine, shortening keeps the thin strands of gluten apart, stops them from forming sheets and networks that run through the dough, and tenderizes the crust by ensuring that the strands of gluten stay separate and short. That is why it’s called shortening. Or so I’ve heard.
Pure fats like lard and Crisco have more shortening (tenderizing) power than butter and margarine, which contain 15 percent water and can actually activate the gluten. Soft fats, even vegetable oils, coat the flour particles easily by flowing around them. This protects them all from water but causes other problems. Fats that are solid at room temperature are less effective, unless you first cut them into infinitesimal pieces. Acids attack and weaken the elastic gluten, which is why many people add vinegar to the dough when they make pies.
Taking Our Measure
Q How can you tell Americans apart from all other people?
A. By their measuring cups. “Nowhere else but in these United States does an entire nation habitually and almost exclusively measure dry ingredients with a cup,” announced Raymond Sokolov,