Sadhvi

This week’s sharing for Oops50 is one of my secret recipes: the perfect pie crust!And, like most of my recipes that I use, this one comes from Switzerland.

In fact, it’s the very same crust that would be found in any tart in any bakery in just about any village in Switzerland.  Yodelaydeeh-hoo!

Switzerland was an interesting chapter of my life that lasted 12 years. It all began when I fell in love with a Swiss man at The Ranch in Oregon in 1985 and moved to Basel, his home town.

Basel is quite possibly my favorite city–it is so medieval & so cool. What’s kind of funny is that I thought I was in Sweden for maybe the first 5 years…ok, maybe that is not so funny! When I found out that I was wrong, I called my Mom, Sally (there was no e-mail back then) and told her. She responded with, “Oh…what’s the difference?” I love my mom!

While it did take me years to understand and then speak the language, it did not take me long to jump into cooking and baking, with all the recipes written in German and grams!

I not only got used to a gram scale for all of my recipes, but I found it to be so much easier. The one I have is mechanical and doesn’t need any batteries.  Better yet! 

It is called the “Soehnle Culina Mechanical Kitchen Scale” and I have had it for over 20 years. Google it and get one.

I use this pie crust for both savory and sweet tarts. It’s the only one I ever use because it’s so easy. And if you try it, it will be hard for you to buy another grocery store pre-made crust with long and hydrogenated ingredients ever again!

Sadhvi’s Secret Swiss Pie Crust

300 grams white flour

¾ – 1 t. salt

150 grams of butter

1 egg (not beaten!) with 4 T. half and half

Add the flour and the salt together in a bowl.Cut the butter up in pieces over it. Now mix it all together with your hands. When it starts to look golden yellow between your fingers & crumbly, you are done.

Take a coffee cup and crack the egg into it. Now add the half and half, and mix it up with a fork. Add this to the flour and butter mixture.(At this point I take one of those bowl scrapers and combine it all to make a little roundish ball.  Do not knead!) Take a piece of parchment paper and cut it out a bit bigger than your pie pan.  Put the dough on the paper, shaping it into a flat disk.

Fold it up and either put in the fridge for a few hours or put it in a freezer bag and freeze. I usually make up a bunch because they keep a long time, and I make a lot of tarts and quiches. When it’s time to make one, just take it out a few hours before you’re ready to roll it out.  Preheat oven to 425 degrees, put in your filling, and bake for 40-45 minutes, or until done!

The apricot tart above was made with my pie crust recipe.  If you want the recipe for the filling, let me know and I’ll post it on oops50.com in the near future!

Related posts:

1. Easy Savory Swiss Tart Recipe
2. Sadhvi Sez: Making a Swiss Tart is Easy!
3. My Secret Poppy Seed Roll Recipe
4. Easy Swiss Chestnut Soup Recipe!
5. Sadhvi’s Secret Red Cabbage Recipe

Tags: easypiecrust, easypiecrustrecipe, easyrecipes, sadhvisezrecipe, secretrecipes, swisscooking, swisstartrecipe

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 13th, 2009 at 1:37 pm and is filed under Hobbies, Living, Recipes/Food, Sadhvi Sez. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.