Slab pies – like our Peach Blueberry Slab Pie – aren’t only fun to make; they feed a dozen or more, whereas your average 9-inch round pie feeds about eight. The catch? You’ll need more dough to make the shell for your slab pie pan, namely a 15-inch by 10-inch by 1-inch tall jelly roll pan. But no problem: this bigger batch of dough is a cinch to mix in the food processor. (But if you DO prefer to make…

So You’re Looking for the Perfect Piecrust. You’ve Come to The Right Place. If you click on the Table of Contents tab at the top of this site, you’ll find any number of good and reliable pie dough recipes. These include several with whole grains, some with varying ratios of butter to Crisco, and others. Eventually, I hope you’ll have time to try all of them. But first let me say that I’m delighted that you found The Pie Academy…

Here’s how you make a graham cracker crust using peanuts, my crust of choice for a number of creamy pies, notably the Creamy Peanut Butter Cup Pie. There are several key steps to making a memorable crumb crust like this, starting with the consistency of the actual crumbs. In order to handle the crumbs with authority, they need to have just enough packability. I’ve made recipes where the crumbs are so dry and unpackable that you can’t get them to…

If you’ve been following my articles and cookbooks for the past, oh, 30 years or so, you’ve probably heard me say about a bazillion times how easy and expeditious it is to make food processor pastry. It can also be downright dangerous if you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing, as I clearly was not on a certain crisp fall day in the early 1990s during a pie making demonstration at Boston’s Faneuil Hall in front of a lively crowd…