Blind baking tart shells

[paulraphael]

Another idea. I just saw this on the baking 911 site. Funny thing is, it's exactly what I used to do, but stopped because it was nonstandard and seemed unrefined:

use foil instead of parchment, and pennies instead of beans or rice.

i'm also considering preheating the pennies while the oven preheats ... so they're already hot and can contribute to baking when they go into the shell.

foil is a little easier to work with than parchment, molds to the shell better, and conducts much better. pennies dense and conductive. total cost of equipment: mere pennies.

Edited December 11, 2007 by paulraphael (log)

[schneich]

we had the same thing, but since we make about 50 tartes per week now we obviously solved the problem ;-) first of all we use what we in germany call a 1-2-3 muerbteig which is one part sugar, 2 parts butter and three parts flour. of course there is also some egg in the recipe. we mix the dough so that it JUST comes together. its quite crumbly so you still have to do a little kneading by hand. next thing you do is wrap the dough in clingfilm and put it in the fridge for t least TWO days.

now you will need some flan rings, or metal cake rings, we use 20 cm ones. now you roll out to about 4 mm and use one of the rings to cut out the discs. the discs go right back to the fridge. next thing is to cut 30 mm strips.

now you grab a ring put in it one of the precut discs and insert the doughstrip and attach it to the disc. now you get a roasting bag make knot in one end and put the resulting bag into the ring. now fill with a few hands of dry rice and push it a little bit just that the rice reaches into every corner. now your ready to bake the sucker until its slightly colored, pull out the bag with the rice and bake for a few minutes more, and voila you got a nice prebaked crust...

the bags with the rice is reusable many times, if you dont understand i could do some pictures of the procedure for you.. :-)

cheers

t.

[gfron1]

Roasting bags...brilliant!

[JeanneCake]

now you get a roasting bag make knot in one end and put the resulting bag into the ring. now fill with a few hands of dry rice and push it a little bit just that the rice reaches into every corner. now your ready to bake the sucker until its slightly colored, pull out the bag with the rice and bake for a few minutes more, and voila you got a nice prebaked crust...

the bags with the rice is reusable many times, if you dont understand i could do some pictures of the procedure for you.. :-)

cheers

t.

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Pictures, yes please!

Just to make sure I'm following this: your roasting bags are pre-sealed at one end, and you are filling it with rice, knotting the open end of the bag and then putting that in to the straight-sided tart pan? The bag won't melt because it's made for high heat, but it doesn't get greasy from the butter in the dough?

and the pennies idea has been mentioned by Julia Child and RLB; and Maida Heatter too. They get darker/discolored over time but they work well...

[alanamoana]

i really love the roasting bag idea! we use plastic wrap (the industrial/restaurant kind) and it works very well also. you do have to be careful that it doesn't touch any metal, but it works very well. i've always been a little leery of dioxins though (that is the term, right? for the chemicals that get released when you heat up plastic?).

[Beanie]

i really love the roasting bag idea!  we use plastic wrap (the industrial/restaurant kind) and it works very well also.  you do have to be careful that it doesn't touch any metal, but it works very well.  i've always been a little leery of dioxins though (that is the term, right?  for the chemicals that get released when you heat up plastic?).

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The last time I tried using plastic wrap filled with beans to prebake pie crust, the film melted. I stood in front of the oven in a state of shock peering through the glass, watching the film melt into the beans. Fortunately, I was able to remove the plastic and beans before the whole thing dissolved into a goopy mess. The pie crust was partly set by that time, so I pushed aluminum foil onto it and finished baking it that way. It came out fine. I was using a small countertop oven, and I think the plastic was too close to the electric heating element. I'll try the roasting bag next time.

[MelissaH]

i really love the roasting bag idea!  we use plastic wrap (the industrial/restaurant kind) and it works very well also.  you do have to be careful that it doesn't touch any metal, but it works very well.  i've always been a little leery of dioxins though (that is the term, right?  for the chemicals that get released when you heat up plastic?).

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If you're concerned about direct contact between the bag and the pie crust, you could probably use foil directly on top of the crust, and then put the bag on the foil. The bag wouldn't contact the food that way, so it wouldn't get buttery-greasy and it wouldn't leach anything through direct contact. But you'd also get the easy-out advantage.

MelissaH