Food From a Hungry Ghost

Last month’s project was a chocolate pie dough. the purpose, of course, was to serve as the base for my Valentine’s day pie which I’m selling now through pre-orders. I didn’t know what flavor the pie would be back in January – just that the dough was going to be chocolate.

In a perfect world I would have the budge for onyx black cocoa powder. The flavor wouldn’t be anything different than what’s pictured – but the intensity of the color would be incredibly appealing IMHO. But this is not a perfect world so I’m just reaching for “unsweetened” cocoa powder and realizing what a privilege that is.

• 240 g AP Flour
• 216 g Butter
• 56 g Cocoa Powder (Dutch if you can)
• 1/2 t Salt
• 1 T Sugar
• 120 g Ice Water (plus more as needed)

How to mix a pie dough is the type of thing that needs to be another entry. If you don’t have a favorite mixing method, my preferred method for mixing a dough is something like Kenji Lopez’s at Serious Eats.

Once we’ve mixed the dough we have enough for two 9″ pie crusts or 6 5″ pie crusts. I portion onto plastic/shrink wrap according to the size of pie I intend to bake, then I wrap and form a disc. I let that disc relax/hydrate in the fridge or freezer for at least an hour before attempting any kind of rolling.

After the dough is rolled (preferably to 1/8″ thick), panned, and crimped it goes back into the freezer for at least another 30 minutes. Preferably an hour, but if you have a strong freezer 30 minutes will do. The oven is heated to 375° for 20 minutes, then the crimped dough is put in – filled with beans wrapped in tin foil to weigh it down.

The crust bakes for 12 minutes at which point the beans are removed and the bottom crust is quickly docked and then returned to the oven. After 5 more minutes the bottom should be flaky and appropriately par-baked. Let cool on a rack before adding any filling.

If you’re the kind of person wondering what makes this a humble pie crust – well… it’s a simple crust. All I’ve done is taken about 30g of flour out of a regular pie dough and replaced it with 28g of cocoa powder.