Now you know about the importance of blind baking pastry and how to do it, why not start whipping up a few delicious treats? This sumptuous Salted Caramel and Chocolate Tart is a chocoholic’s dream, while a batch of Gluten-Free Spinach and Ricotta Tartlets will make the ideal canapes for your next dinner party. Soggy bottoms, be gone! This will help to prevent the crust from shrinking or becoming misshapen during the baking process. Commercial Pie Weights Blind baking doesn’t need to be difficult, and there are several different methods that you can try. The recipe itself will likely give you an indication of the times and temperatures required, or the degree to which the crust should be baked.

All you need to do is preheat your oven to the desired temperature and then coat the bottom and sides of your pie crust with meringue powder. Commercial pie weights usually take the form of ceramic balls. A sheet of parchment paper or aluminum foil is placed over the crust and the weights are then placed on top. Well, few of us are strangers to the disappointing soggy pie-crust base that can result from recipes that contain very wet fillings. Quiche and certain fruit pies are particularly vulnerable to this problem. One problem with blind baking is that without a filling to hold down the pastry, the dough can puff up as steam produced during baking gets trapped in the dough’s gluten structure. This can lead to an uneven crust, and over- or under-baked areas. A third and quite elegant method of blind baking is to use a second, smaller pie form as your weight. This should sit on top of your paper or foil, providing a heavy and flat weight to keep your dough in place.Some easy alternatives for pie weights include dried rice, beans, or corn, steel balls, metal chains, sugar, and a second, smaller pie form. We’ll take a look at each of these in more detail below. So you’ve decided to make your family a delicious summer fruit tart, or take advantage of the fall’s harvest by baking a sweet pumpkin pie, but there’s just one snag… the recipe calls for blind baking the crust and the addition of pie weights, and that’s not something you keep hanging around your kitchen. By part-baking a crust we can adjust the amount of time that the crust is in the oven, which is useful when fillings require a shorter baking time or a lower temperature than the crust. A pie crust can also become soggy (see my tips for preventing this from happening) if the filling is too wet, as with quiche and some fruit pies, and blind baking helps to prevent this. Why Do I Need Pie Weights? If using pie weights, you may need to adjust how many you use in proportion to their weight. Steel or ceramic balls will likely be heavier than dried beans, so you may need to use several layers to compensate.

Pour your baking beans/dried beans/dried pasta on top. This will help weigh it down and stop the pastry from puffing up when it’s baking. You may have come across this term in recipe books time and time again, but still you’re not quite sure what it means. Or perhaps you’ve tried it once or twice, and still haven’t got that perfect pie crust that you were hoping for.They can be used in place of traditional blind baking beans by simply placing them on top of your pie dough before baking. Or perhaps you do not want to bake your filling at all – from chocolate pudding to fresh fruit tarts, there are many occasions when a cold filling is added to a pre-baked crust. Can I skip blind baking? This is entirely understandable, as once the filling is baked to our liking, we have to remove the pie to prevent it from burning or over-cooking. Make sure that your pie weights are evenly distributed over the surface of the crust, and pushed out to the sides. Keeping the weights in an oven bag can make removal of them easier. Follow the advice above and you should be baking perfect pie crusts every time, no matter your choice of pie weights!

These are basically just round little ceramic discs with holes in them for air circulation during baking (just like real pie weights). The problem for many home bakers is that recipes simply ask for a crust to be “blind baked” without describing what this involves or how to do it. Well that’s where this article comes in! Remove it from the oven and, using the greaseproof paper to protect your fingers, take out the beans. Then bake the pastry for a further five minutes.Baking Blind" redirects here. For the cookery project for visually impaired people, see Penny Melville-Brown. Pie shell after blind baking