Pumpkin pie

If you know me at all, you know that I greatly enjoy baking: cookies, cakes, rolls, you name it.  Pie is a relative exception, as I am not usually impressed with store-bought pie crusts (what's in those?) and I don't particularly care for super-flaky pie crust anyway.  Also, I've noticed that almost every pie crust recipe is awash with dire warnings like "MAKE SURE EVERYTHING IS COLD!!!1!" or "DO NOT OVERHANDLE DOUGH AT RISK OF TURNING IT INTO SOMETHING TERRIBLE", or "Don't use a food processor, the pastry blender is the ONLY way to do it", etc. etc.  So for a while, I would make fruit cobblers, crisps, and other treats that only required a top crust.  But then I received a small food processor for my birthday along with a later suggestion that it could be used to make pie crusts.

Our handy copy of Joy of cooking has a number of pie crust recipes, but they all feature shortening, which we never buy.  So I found a few recipes and techniques for all-butter pie crusts and set about making some dough.

I needed some way to keep the water cold.  Festive, no?

The new food processor is ready for some pie crust action.

Either my food processor was too small for the amount of stuff, or a flour grenade went off in my kitchen.  Nonetheless, this was the dough before it got dumped onto the counter, shaped, and tossed into the fridge.

Recipes say that the dough should be able to form a disk at this point.  I got something more like a crumbly mound o' dough.  Perhaps I hadn't added enough water?

Crumbliness notwithstanding, this stuff rolled out great after a couple days in the fridge and a much-longer-than-recommended time between taking the dough out of the fridge and rolling it out.  Look at that edge!

A pumpkin pie in all its glory.  This is made with a pie pumpkin that I had already baked; I never liked pumpkin pie (no joke) until I started making it with a fresh pumpkin.  This crust turned out tender and not very flaky: perfect for Dom and me, but your conclusion may vary.

Was this as much trouble as I thought it was going to be?  Not really.  Sure, making crust takes a lot longer than going to the store and getting some out of the freezer case, and I'm sure it can be very finicky, but I think the results are worth it.  Based on some of the comments I got for this one, it seems that others thought so too!

TASTY.