Blind Baking

The Hoosier Mama Book of Pie
Blind baking is a funny-sounding term that simply means baking a pie shell prior to filling it. Though it has been a part of kitchen-speak for centuries, no one has any idea where the term came from. Lately, “pre-baking” has taken its place in contemporary recipes, and while it is certainly more descriptive, at Hoosier Mama we prefer the traditional term. Use “blind baking” confidently in a sentence and you get automatic membership in the secret society of pie makers!

Blind baking is used for pies like Chocolate Cream, where the filling is not cooked in the pie shell, and for quiches and some custards, where the shell needs to bake longer than the filling. We also blind bake the shells for pies like Pumpkin or Hoosier Sugar Cream, where the pie filling bakes for up to an hour in the pie shell. We find it keeps the bottom crust from getting soggy.

In blind baking, pie shells are lined with parchment paper and filled with weights to keep air pockets from forming as the shells bake. You can buy ceramic weights or stainless steel “pie chains” at specialty cooking stores, but dried pinto beans are inexpensive and work just as well. At the shop, we line the shells with 13x5-inch (32.5x12.5-cm) coffee filters instead of parchment paper; they fit the 9-inch (22.5-cm) crimps perfectly and let air flow through to the bottom crust. Don’t use foil or wax paper; foil blocks airflow, resulting in a tough, dense bottom crust, and the coating on wax paper will burn and smoke in a hot oven.