Pie, it’s more than a dessert

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I’ve often said that making pie dough is the gateway to understanding that cooking/baking is a craft.  You get your materials, you identify someone to teach you.  And you start (and fumble). Then you repeat (and fumble differently).  And repeat (and fumble less).  And repeat (wow, it’s working!).  To  me, that’s what craft is all about.  Whether you’re knitting a scarf, making a quilt or making a pie. Craft involves manual dexterity and the ability to follow directions, at least at the beginning. If you really commit to learning a craft then often you try out directions from many mentors. Maybe you pull up a YouTube video, or go to a local class, or open a book. The reason I am so excited to share my Craftsy class is that it combines the best of all of these ways of learning. So come into my private classroom.  I’ll be there to help.  I’ll answer questions and guide you along the process of getting your hands used to the feel of the dough.

Watch my trailer about Perfecting The Pie Crust with Evan Kleiman on Craftsy


Thanksgiving = Pie

If you’re looking for some pointers for Thanksgiving pie you’ve come to the right place.  For dough here are some of my faves:

Friends and Family’s Roxana Jullapat’s Cream Cheese Dough

Asheville’s Pie Lady’s Butter Crust

Cook’s Illustrated Vodka Pie Dough

The Best Gluten Free Pie Crust I’ve Ever Eaten

Clemence Gossett’s Pie Dough from Gourmandise School

My own 3-2-1 Ratio Pie Dough.

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8th Annual Good Food Pie Contest

8th Annual Good Food Pie Contest


My Pie Journey – How it All Began

For some strange reason still unknown to me, at the beginning of the summer in 2009 I decided to make a pie a day all summer long.  Pie has always been my favorite sweet, but I didn’t feel that I was a “master” of it.  So understanding that repetition is the road to mastery, I set out on a journey.  It changed my life.  I know that’s a dramatic way to characterize the simple task of making pie, but the journey became much greater than the sum of the simple parts that make up a pie. To ensure that I followed through with the new daily task of making a pie a day I went public on the Good Food Blog.  Gradually the blog posts started conversations within a worldwide virtual community of pie lovers.  Folks commiserated with my failures and cheered my successes and even better they began sharing family memories and recipes.  There were new takes on old favorites, and even pie adjacent interests like design (aprons, dishes) started to bloom.  This general pie besotted infatuation morphed into an actual pie crazed community of people here in Los Angeles through the creation of our 1st Annual Good Food Pie Contest that year.  It’s now eight years later and once again I am looking forward to another summer of Pie.
It will be another season of sharing recipes, philosophy, techniques and memories with professionals and home cooks alike. You can meander through the Good Food Pie-a-Day Posts for 2010-2013 on my pinterest boards. As for that first year of struggle, 2009, I’m in the process of rebuilding blog posts that were lost during a platform transition.  It’s a long term project since I never actually wrote recipes for those first pies.  I plan to write those recipes and take pictures of pies made now.  You’ll be able to see how repetition truly is the road to, if not mastery exactly,  at least a much greater skill level.  Finding all those old photos of pie failure is a humbling experience.  The Visual Pie Mosaic below is made up of photos of that first year.  Each pic links to the original post.  So keep checking over the summer to see recipes and new photos. If you love to eat pie or make pie please share your love in the comments section.  And if you want to start your own trip to Pie Mastery I’d be happy to get you on the road. Check out my Classes page. Or taste the Craftsy class.

Gallery of Pies and Pie Info from My Summer of Pie


My Easy as Pie App for iPhone and iPad

Appetite’s EASY AS PIE – The App Appetite’s Easy As Pie is a series of 20 cooking videos with me that you can have on your iphone or ipad.  The videos are a step by step format that you can easily stop and start as you need.  You can also email yourself the written recipe.  
Click here to read reviews.

Buy Easy as Pie at the Apple App Store
Download Easy As Pie App at the Apple Store