I have a complicated
relationship with rolled pastry dough. I
know what you’re thinking: C’mon lady,
stop being so melodramatic. It’s just
pastry. It’s delicious. What could possibly be so complicated?
I won’t be offended if you
roll your eyes. I get it: I have pastry
issues.
It’s not that I don’t like
rolled pastry. Trust me, I do. This isn’t some Atkins-diet, carb-hating
hangup. I’ve rarely met a pie,
croissant, or cut-out cookie that I didn’t love. But the dough can be so downright exasperating. I'm just terrible at working with pastry dough. Case in point: a few years ago, I volunteered to make my
mother’s famous apple pie for a Thanksgiving celebration with my in-laws (I
wasn’t yet married at that point, but I still thought of them as my
in-laws). In my mind, I had visions of
serenely rolling out pie dough into perfectly round circles. After laying the pie crusts in the pie plate,
I would fill it with heaping scoops of apples, and then crimp the edges
together with plenty of dough to spare. I
would brush the crusts with an egg wash and finish with a sprinkle of sugar, to
give that special sheen. The crust would
bake up to be perfectly golden brown and the aroma of fresh apple pie would
waft through my kitchen.
