pie crust (cherry)

Thanksgiving is coming up and we all know what that means, it's time to eat till our tummy's are twice their normal size and then eat some more. Everyone is planning who will be hosting the dinner and who will be bringing what dish. For my family it changes between my uncle's house and mine each year. My mom and older sister are the ones who are mainly in charge of making dinner, but as I get older I am given more responsibility for making dinner. This year I am in change of baking dessert for dinner to bring to my uncles house. You can't have thanksgiving without pie, and store bought pie is never as good as homemade.

Pie Crust (cherry):
 Cherry pie is an all time favorite and it's so easy to make. The cherry filling sadly is hard to make homemade, the homemade part of cherry pie is the crust. Store bought never tastes as good.

Step one: in a mixing bowl combine 2 cups of flour and 1/2 teaspoons of salt
Step two: mix in 2/3 cups of shortening till the mixture is pea size clumps of the shortening covered with the dry mixture.
tip: use a pastry cutter to mix in the shortening (shown below)

Step three: start to add in 1 tablespoon of water evenly into mixture. then toss up with a fork and then mix around with a fork and then push to side of both. repeat this process until the mixture Is completely moist. should be around 6 to 7 tablespoons of water total.

Step four: divide the dough in half and make each portion into two separate balls. (1st section of the dough will be the bottom half of the crust and the 2nd half will be the top.)

Step five: start to roll the dough out to create a circle on a lightly floured surface

tip: to roll into a circle flatten the ball of dough with a hand and then roll out with dough starting at the center. should become a circle 12 inches in diameter.

Step six: lay the circle of dough onto a 9 inch pie plate

tip: to transfer the circle of dough from table to pie plate wrap the dough around the rolling pin by holding one end of dough onto the rolling pin and rolling the rest of it on. then lay end of dough so that some is still hanging of the end of the pie plate and unroll the dough off the rolling pin.

Step seven: slowly and carefully guide the dough all the way to the bottom of the plate.

tip: make sure not to stretch the dough or else those parts will be thinner and bake much faster then the rest

Step eight: cut off the extra dough on the edge all the way up to the rim of pie plate.

Step nine: now back to the other ball of dough, there are many ways to do a top pie crust. one way is to do what you did for the bottom crust, but this time cut slits of even shapes into the dough so that the steam can come through the top. this is very important to have these holes, otherwise steam will build up and create a big air bubble. what my mom likes to do is to take the dough and make a weaving top. this is achieved by after repeating the first five steps cut the dough into even strips. this can be a bit difficult and takes more time than the others but it looks pretty cool in the end.

Step ten: before placing the dough on top of the pie first you must put the cherry filling inside. I'm sure you can make homemade filling but I honestly have no idea how so my family just uses good old store bought in can cherry filling. I've never had it any other way and it's still good to me.

Step eleven: there are many ways to weave the dough but this is very hard to explain just in words. here are some pictures of different ways to weave the strips, once you have it down it becomes a lot easier than it looks.

Step twelve: cut off the extra dough the hang off the side

Step thirteen: pinch the dough all around the edge to create a wavy edge and to pinch together the top dough with the bottom.

This is the end process on how to make the crust, the next part is easy. you just stick I in the oven and follow the directions for whatever kind of pie you are making asks for, because this is not just cherry pie crust, it is your basic crust for any pie.