Читать книгу Beginner's Guide to DIY & Home Repair - Kathryn Hawkins - Страница 19

This type of pie is most usually made in a deep pie dish. Put the filling in the dish so that it is quite full and a little rounded on top – if you don’t have quite enough filling, use a pie funnel to stop the pastry sagging.

Roll out the pastry of choice to the required thickness, 5cm (2inch) wider than the pie dish. Wet the rim of the pie dish with water. Cut 2.5cm (1inch) wide strips of pastry from the outer edge of the rolled pastry and press them neatly on to the rim of the dish to cover the rim completely. Brush the pastry rim with water or beaten egg. Lift the remaining pastry on to the rolling pin and lay it over the pie dish. If you are using a pie funnel, you need to cut a cross in the centre of the pastry first. Trim off the excess pastry with a sharp knife held at a slight angle away from the dish. Seal the pastry firmly by either pressing with your thumb and forefinger or using the prongs of a fork.

It is important to get a good seal on your pastry and “knocking up” the edges is an extra insurance policy towards achieving this. Using a kitchen knife blade, make horizontal shallow cuts in the side of the pastry edges to give the appearance of layers or pages in a book and merge the two layers together to seal. Do this all round the rim of pastry.

Pastry trimmings can be gathered, rolled and used as decoration on top of the pie lid. Cut a slit in the centre of the pie crust for the steam to escape, and glaze as directed. I prefer to bake all my pies in their dish on a baking tray, just in case any filling bubbles out during cooking. Some cooks like to preheat the baking tray in the oven as it warms up so that the pie goes straight on to a hot tray and gets cooking quicker; this is supposed to help cook a pastry bottom more crisply, but I’m not entirely sure it really makes that much difference.