We started out with making the crust. From experience, we have found that our pie dough recipe sometimes ends up flaky and deliciously buttery and sometimes it ends up tough and hard to bite into. So, we decided to experiment and try a version of the Cook’s Illustrated Pie Dough recipe. Since they use shortening in their recipe which we don’t like to use, we decided to stick with the Gourmet Pastry Dough recipe with one exception. Vodka. We’ve learned a clever trick that Cook’s Illustrated has taught us which was to use half water and half vodka in the dough. This allows you to get the moisture you need initially to roll out the dough yet not adding too much water content which will result in a tough crust. The alcohol will eventually evaporate, thus, never intruding in on flavor.
As stated earlier, we followed the Gourmet Pastry Dough recipe except for the ice water part where we had a little dipping bowl of half water and half vodka with a couple cubes of ice. When it came to adding the tablespoons of water, we carefully added a tablespoon one at a time until the dough held together nicely. Then we gathered the dough together and made a disc. Wrapped that in saran wrap and refrigerated for at least 1 hour.
Next, the filling. We started out toasting the pecans. I've toasted a lot of nuts in my life and have made the mistake of burning the nuts too many times. This time I was careful to watch the nuts in the oven. As they started to smell toasted and look toasted, I pulled them out.
For the chocolate, we used the Trader Joe's 72% Cacao Pound Plus Belgium Chocolate. Since we had a digital scale which really comes in handy at times, we weighed approximately 4 oz of chocolate.
I've learned another trick from one of my good pastry chef friends. In order to avoid getting any water near the melted chocolate which causes the melted chocolate to seize, you can just melt the shaving in a bowl in the microwave. For this, I just tossed all of the shaving in a ceramic bowl and microwaved on high for 1 minute. Then I stirred the partially melted chocolate until all of the shavings were fully melted.
For the rest of the ingredients, we just piled them in a bowl and vigorously stirred the wet ingredients.
Next, we rolled out the dough which was at a great consistency- not too sticky or dry.
Then trimmed the sides, poured in the chocolate, pecans, and filling. We brushed the sides with an egg wash and then popped the pie into the oven for 60 minutes. In the end, I think 60 minutes was just a bit too long. The filling was okay but a bit on the dry side. I think 50 minutes would be just perfect. Next time, I would also chopped up the pecans into smaller pieces. Half of a pecan is too big for easy pie cutting.
