Happy May Day! My middle sister spent her college years at a small Seven Sisters school known for both its academic rigor and its fondness for Anglophile-ish, slightly archaic traditions (lots of teas there). On May 1st, the president of the college would ride into campus on a white horse, and students wore flower crowns and white dresses and sang hymns to the May before having strawberries and cream for breakfast.

White horses, sadly, do not have full representation in my part of Temescal. But the strawberries from just south of here are finally starting to get sweet (all that rain delayed the season somewhat). If you look, you can probably find some rhubarb, too. Any new kind of fruit is very welcome right now, during this season when the weather feels like spring but winter's kales and citrus are still hanging on.

Rhubarb

Remember that rainy scene in the beginning of Animal Vegetable Miracle, when author Barbara Kingsolver, in the first week of her locavore experiment, is despondent at the thought of returning home to her banana-less household with no fruit? Drenched by a spring downpour, she splashes through the farmers' market and is rewarded at last with a beautiful bundle of red-stemmed rhubarb.

Unless you're a gardener and an old-fashioned pie-lover, you've probably never seen rhubarb growing, and you might not recognize it even if you did. A perennial plant, it forms a low, leafy mound, with wide spinachy leaves the size of a hat. Look under the leaves and you'll see long, reddish stalks coming up from the ground. Grip one firmly and pull it out. Trim off the mildly toxic leaf, and there you have it, a sour, sour stalk of what used to be called pieplant.

Still, it doesn't take much sweetening to bring out its lovely tangy fruitiness, one that matches incredibly well with both strawberries and orange.

Lots of recipes tell you to put the rhubarb through all sorts of elaborate machinations before putting it in the pie. What a bunch of, well, rhubarb! Just cut it up, toss it with sugar and a little cornstarch, and you're on your way to pie heaven. The only caveat is that rhubarb contains a lot of water, which the sugar will pull out, so you want to make your filling just before you're ready to bake your pie. Otherwise, you'll end up with a lot of small pieces of fruit floating in a big puddle of syrupy liquid.

Don't go overboard with the cornstarch; being juicy is one of this pie's homemade charms. Vanilla ice cream is the perfect accompaniment.

Because this is a very juicy pie, it's good to use a lattice crust to let the steam out. Yes, making a proper lattice does take some concentration and a little finger-dexterity, but I find the few minutes' effort to be well-rewarded by the amazement this fancy-pants basket weave inspires. If, for some smart reason, your utensil drawer contains a little crinkled-edged pastry or ravioli wheel, now's the time to use it. It will make your pie crust look incredibly 1950s-cute.

So, this is how you do it: Lay your longest strip of dough across the middle of the pie. Then lay another long strip crosswise across the middle. Lay another strip down next the first. Then lay down another crosswise strip, only weave it under the first strip and over the second one. Keep doing this, alternating vertical and horizontal strips, lifting the strips as necessary to get that cute under-and-over pattern. If your strip breaks, just jam the pieces back together or hide the broken parts under another strip.

You can make this either as one pie or six three- to four-inch tarts. In order to get the right crust-to-fruit ratio, I would use tart pans or ramekins that are at least two inches deep.

Oh, you modern Americans, what is wrong with you? Why do you recoil, as if from a snake, from the very muttered hint of mincemeat? Pie may be sneaking back into the spotlight, weary of being upstaged by all those pink cupcakes beehived with frosting, but still, you could look far and wide here and find nary a scrap of mince on our menus.

Once, mincemeat was our heritage, our honor guard, the leading light of American pie fillings. It was exalted at holiday time but consumed with gusto year-round, at Automats and church suppers, carried on Formica trays through cafeterias and paraded on gold-rimmed china in the dining rooms of downtown hotels.

The history was, of course, a British one, but the legacy of the dense, sweet-spiced, citrusy-raisiny-almondy filling stretches back at least a handful of centuries, when the line between sweet and savory was a much more porous one. Originally, mincemeat was made with both beef and beef fat, added to a rich mixture of dried fruits, spices, candied citrus peels, and almonds, preserved with a hefty dose of spirits. Over the years, the meat receded, although the fat (typically suet, the particularly pure fat taken from around the kidneys) remained, to give an unmistakable richness to the mixture.

You may think you'd hate it—prunes? suet?—but not so. This holiday season I passed around many of these tarts, filled with Delia Smith's unbeatable recipe for Homemade Christmas Mincemeat. Served up small and warm, in the late, lowering afternoon with a cup of steaming tea or after dinner with a glass of port, naught but lard-and-butter crust crumbs came back on the plate. (A word of advice, though: halve Delia's recipe, and you'll still have more than enough mincemeat to feed everyone you know.)

But now that the indulgence of the holidays has passed, mincemeat might be a tougher sell. Enter Black Tart, a lovely winter dessert based on a 17th-century recipe for "black tart stuff," which the eminent British food writer Elizabeth David praises in An Omelette and a Glass of Wine as "rich and dark without the cloying and heavy qualities of mincemeat." She also recommends it as having "a certain originality which provides a small surprise at the end of the meal."

Leafing through cookbooks heaped from shelves to floor, I can trace the roots of my own Black Tart to several recipes: David's 1969 recipe, itself a modern interpretation of Robert May's recipe from The Accomplisht Cook (1660); the Harvest Tart from the The Silver Palate Cookbook (1982); and the Winter Fruit Tart from the Bay Wolf Restaurant Cookbook (2001).

Mostly, though, it came from messing around with the memories of all these things in a friend's kitchen on a raw, gray afternoon, when we both wanted something sweet to eat without having to leave the house.

What was on hand in the winter pantry? Dried fruit and nuts, candied fruit peel left over from holiday baking, and plenty of liquor, likewise left over from holiday parties. Thus, Black Tart, a lazy-day sort of dessert that will warm the kitchen and perfume the house with a deep medieval scent of winter at bay--a whiff of whiskey, a breath of ginger and cinnamon, a Mediterranean sparkle of fresh tangerine.

The dried fruits aren't poached so much as steeped. After a slow warming, they sit on the back of the stove for an hour or so, soaking up the wine and spices, swelling up soft and plump as they absorb nearly all the liquid.

A cookie-like tart dough, a little sweeter and richer than regular pie crust, works particularly well here. To make it, sift together two and a half cups of flour, a quarter cup sugar, and a half-teaspoon salt. Using a pastry blender, cut in 12 tablespoons (one and a half sticks, 6 oz) of chilled butter, until mixture looks sandy and flaky, like dry oatmeal. Then, instead of the usual ice water, moisten the flour with two egg yolks, one teaspoon vanilla, and three to four teaspoons of water to form a soft dough. Chill for several hours while the filling is cooking and cooling.

Black Tart
This tastes best on the day it's made, but will last for several days if well wrapped. The recipe can also be used to made small individual-sized tarts. For the prettiest crust on small tarts, brush tart crust with milk and sprinkle with sugar before baking.

Ingredients
1 large apple, peeled, cored, and diced
1 cup dried apricots, chopped
1 cup pitted prunes, chopped
1/2 cup raisins
2-3 tbsp candied orange peel
1 cup red wine OR 1/2 cup port and 1/2 cup water
1/4 cup whiskey or brandy
1/8 tsp EACH cinnamon, cardamon, nutmeg, and ginger
Big pinch of freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar, or to taste
Zest and juice of 1 tangerine
1/2 cup toasted walnuts or almonds, chopped
Dough for two-crust tart (see above)
Whipped cream for serving

Preparation
1. In a heavy-bottomed pot, mix all filling ingredients except for walnuts. Warm over low heat, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes. Turn off heat and let fruit absorb the rest of the liquid for an hour or so.

2. Divide the tart dough into two rounds and roll out. Line an 8-inch or 9-inch tart pan with first round.

3. Stir walnuts into filling. Cut remaining dough into 1-inch wide strips. Lay strips in a criss-cross lattice pattern to cover most of the filling. Cover entire tart with foil or waxed paper and chill in the fridge for an hour or so.

4. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Unwrap tart and bake until crust in golden brown and filling is bubbling, 30-35 minutes. Cool on a rack. Serve with whipped cream.

The Exploring Ingredients Class at San Francisco Baking Institute

Last week was big for me. I took a week off from work, returned very few emails, and my dogs suffered a severe lack of exercise. Why? I spent all week baking eight hours a day at the San Francisco Baking Institute, brushing up on my skills and learning the "how's" and "why's" behind much of the baking I do at home (How exactly can I make this cookie chewier? Why add potato starch here? What effect does pastry flour have on this recipe?). Each day I came home with boxes of treats to share with family, friends, and coworkers along with copious notes and a head spinning with information on technique and method. After spending the weekend debriefing, I thought I'd share the top ten things I learned from my one week in pastry school. Some of the tips here are relatively basic and fundamental, others are a bit more advanced. Each could certainly use its very own post. But sometimes broad coverage is nice--it's just enough to get you inspired to break out a muffin or cake recipe for the coming week. I'd love to hear any of your own baking tips/revelations, too!

Making Breakfast Pasties: Day 2

1. Mixing Methods: It's important to understand the different mixing methods when baking. And then to follow them. For example, when using the "Creaming Method" for cookies, you're really just creaming together the sugar and butter until combined. However, when making brownies, you need to integrate a lot of air into your batter when mixing your sugar and butter. This acts as your leavening agent (look at most brownie recipes and you'll notice a lack of chemical leaveners like baking soda or powder). So you'll need to mix on a higher speed for a longer period of time. If you're interested in reading more on mixing methods, The Reluctant Gourmet has done a nice post covering them in more detail.

2. Pay Attention to Your Flours: People use all different kinds of flour in pastry production for a variety of reasons. Cake flour and pastry flour have the lowest amount of protein whereas bread flour and all-purpose flour have the highest. As a general rule, the higher the amount of protein, the more structure the dough will have (think of how many cakes are so light and fluffy while traditional breads are heartier). Once you become familiar with how the various flours change the outcome of your pastries and baked goods, you can begin adapting recipes to create different textures simply by swapping the flours.

3. All About Super-Fine Sugar: I generally use granulated sugar at home. However, this past week we worked solely with superfine sugar (unless the recipe called for powdered or liquid sugar) and I learned why: superfine sugar melts in moisture more quickly than regular granulated sugar, and is really preferable for fine textured baked goods. Try it--you may just notice a difference.

From Angel Food Cake to Madelines: A Few of the Desserts

4. Temperature Matters: Much of what you're doing when mixing various batters is creating a smooth emulsion. We've all made a recipe where the batter turned out a little too chunky or broken looking, haven't we? There are many reasons why this might happen, but the main one is that the ingredients aren't the proper temperature. If you don't have time to bring your eggs up to room temperature, mix them together in a small bowl and microwave them for 20-30 seconds until warm. And for many recipes (not including pie dough, obviously) you want your butter softened but not oily or completely melted. Pay attention to the temperature of your ingredients and you'll have smooth, silky dough more often than not.

5. Take it Slow: Ah, cakes...a relative cousin to the cookie but with much more moisture. Because of this increased moisture, you'll notice most recipes ask that you alternate between dry and wet ingredients when combining the two together. You don't want to break the emulsion (or bind) between the butter and the eggs or your batter will start to look broken or separated. Slow down. Take your time. If a recipe asks that you alternate between the wet and the dry, there's a reason for that: don't dump your ingredients in all at once.

6. All About Pie Dough: I love making pies and quietly judge people who don't make their own crust. It's just so basic and tastes so much better than boxed pie crust. I was humbled this week though when I learned about the different kinds of pie crusts and why you'd want to choose one over the other depending on your fillings. It would take a few additional posts to cover the different kinds of pie doughs available to you. If you're interested in reading more, I'd check out: The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum or Joy of Cooking: All About Pies and Tarts by Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker. But for now, know that there are flaky and mealy crusts. The basic recipe is the same (a nice butter crust or a butter and lard crust), but a mealy dough is good for cream pies and wet fillings because you're incorporating the butter into the dough more (smaller chunks) thereby creating a coarse almost cornmeal like crust and a tighter dough. A flaky butter crust with large chunks of butter will always absorb more moisture making it much less ideal for cream pies and other wet fillings.

Meringues and Diamond Cookies

7. How Do I Make My Cookie ____ ? So you like your chocolate chip cookie crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside? Or maybe you like a tender, cakey cookie? How do you look at a recipe and alter it to fit your needs? A few good pointers: if you like a crispy cookie, you're looking for a recipe with low moisture and high fat and sugar. If you're looking for more of a soft cookie, the recipe will be lower in sugar and fat with a high moisture content. And if you're a chewy cookie fan, your recipe will call for more moisture and sugar and less fat. It'll also call for a stronger flour with more protein (like bread flour). What does this mean for the home baker? Experiment. If you want a chewy cookie and you're using the typical Toll House Recipe, try bread flour instead and use a bit more sugar. Take notes and compare. With the right information, you can have more control over your recipes.

8. Freezing and Storing: A good rule of thumb on this is to think about the moisture in your product. If there's a lot of moisture in something you've made (custards, lemon bars etc.), you generally want to avoid freezing after baking. Something with low moisture and high fat like a cookie is o.k. to freeze whereas a product with high moisture and lower fat like a soft, crumbly muffin really isn't great to freeze once baked.

9. All About Chilling: Have you noticed lately that many cookie recipes ask you to chill your dough in the freezer before baking? What's going on here? The most likely answer is that chilling decreases the probability that your cookies will spread when baked. Another possbility is one the New York Times stands behind with their infamous Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe: that dough tends to develop flavors when allowed to overnight, resulting in a richer, more buttery/toffee-like dough. Try it. You decide.

10. A Few Tips for Working with Chocolate: People spend years studying chocolate and confections, but for the purposes of home baking and simple pastry production, there are a few good things to know. First, when you're melting chocolate in a double boiler, you always want to cover the bowl that the chocolate's in. The second moisture hits the chocolate mixture, you're going to run the risk of grainy chocolate. Second, don't overheat your mixture. This, too, will create lumps. Last, don't let your bowl actually touch the water. You want space in between the bowl and the water below--this is where steam is trapped and this is what's going to melt your chocolate.

Kate McDermott laughing over pie

If you haven't heard of Kate McDermott, you're missing out. I first learned about her from a few Seattle friends who had taken her pie-making classes and insisted that it changed the way they thought about crust. And these are kitchen savvy people. Then I read somewhere that Ruth Reichl deemed Kate's crust an "absolutely perfect crust." That's about the time I started stalking Kate. I'd go to her website to see if she was planning on teaching in the Bay Area. No luck. I started following her @katemcdermott on twitter to see if she'd give away hints there. Then I finally wrote her an email asking if she'd consider teaching a class the weekend I was going to be up in Seattle in August. And voila--a few weeks later, I heard that she'd decided to do a shortened version of her regular class at Dianne's Market Kitchen as a demo. I signed up immediately. And like the rest of the folks who have written testimonials, I'm forever changed when it comes to pie.

So today, with her blessing, I'm going to share with you her infamous recipe and all of her fabulous tips. And of course some photos so you feel like you were along for the ride. Kate's come to the conclusion that there are three types of pie people in this world: makers, eaters, and seekers. After taking this class, you can literally be all three at one time. First things first: if you actually sit and listen to Kate, she's incredibly wise. Pie or no pie. While pie crust can make people uptight and anxious, Kate has a calming 'everything will turn out fine' demeanor. She says about the crust: "Just feel it...we all know how to do this stuff." Later in class she states how "it's simple--otherwise we still wouldn't all be doing it." And my favorite Kate quote: "Everything turns out fine in pie." Ah, a breath of fresh air in an often complex pie-making world.

Kate and Dianne showing off the amazing peach pie

The other thing that struck me immediately about the way Kate approaches pie is that she sets an intention for each pie. If you practice yoga, you'll recognize the practice of setting an intention before you begin: sending out some good vibes to someone struggling or someone that needs a little extra light in their day. Kate does this with each pie she makes. Regardless of whether or not this is a little too touchy-feely for you, it's a great reminder to be conscious and aware when we set out to bake pie. After Kate set an intention to send good thoughts to a friend struggling with cancer, I knew this would be a special class. This wasn't just a peach pie. This was a peach pie baked with love, skill, and deliberate thoughtfulness and care.

Setting an intention for her pie

Now for a few nuts and bolts. Where to begin? Ingredients and equipment seems like a logical start.

Ingredients and Equipment
Kate uses King Arthur Flour, Kerry Gold Irish Butter (she buys it from Trader Joe's--the best deal in town, she insists), and leaf lard she orders from a small farm in Pennsylvania. And perhaps most importantly, she insists on using only the most superior fruit you can buy. That way, you don't need to add much sugar at all. In our class, we used Frog Hollow Cal Red peaches and nothing more than a little sugar, flour, salt, tapioca, and nutmeg. It turned out absolutely dreamy.

As far as equipment, Kate uses either an 8-inch or 9-inch pan and admits to loving many kinds of pans--from ceramic to glass. She does advise, however, to stay away from those disposable aluminum pie pans because they interfere with the even temperature of the pie crust. Kate also uses a dowel pin and a pastry cloth to roll out her dough. You can find both at your local food supply store.

After discussing ingredients and equipment, Kate began to speak about pie in general, and the elements that make up a good pie:

4 Elements of a Pie Filling:
1) Superior Fruit
2) Thickener
3) Seasoning
4) Sweetener

Pie Filling: Fruit
With any good fruit pie, there are some considerations that will make a ho-hum pie extraordinary. Kate weighs in:

• Quantity: O.K., so this tip is genius in my opinion. I always struggle with how much fruit it will take to make my pie filling. Kate uses a method where she takes whole peaches (or apples, or whatever you're using) and literally places them in the pie pan. Once it's full, you've got enough fruit. In our case with this pie, I believe we used 4 large peaches for our 8-inch dish.
• To peel or not to peel: Kate doesn't bother. Ever. I love this about her.
• Choosing the best fruit: With peaches, Kate says you want to see gold coming out of the rim (not green) of the peach--that way, you know it's gotten all of the sun and nutrients available to it. And when you're choosing a peach, a heavy peach means it has more sugar.

New Trick to Figure out How Many Peaches to Include

As we watched Kate make, form, and roll out her crust she gave many invaluable tips that I've used since and have seen great improvements in my pies. Here they are, in no particular order:

Kate's Crust Tips:

• Cold, cold, cold: Everything must be cold. I was surprised to learn that Kate not only uses cold butter and lard, but she also keeps her butter, her rolling pin, her bowl--even the pastry cloth in the freezer.
• Adding water to your dough: Kate says two things: it's not precise, and go slow. She mentions a 3-2-1 formula where she adds 3 Tbsp. of water to begin and advises to just quickly move the dough around (you're not doing a thorough mixing here) and press together to see if it holds. If it doesn't, add 2 Tbsp. more. A good rule of thumb: the colder the fat, the more water you’re going to need. And an important side-note: Don’t get ice into the dough! When asked if she likes to err on the wet or dry side with her pie crust, Kate says she'd much rather err on the wet side (apparently, Ruth Reichl agrees).
• Forming your dough: Cut your dough ball in half and you should see marbling. You want two “chubby disks” (about 4 inches by 1.5 inch). Wrap your disks in dough and then actually shape them how you'd like while they're in the plastic wrap (this was a revelation to me).
• Rolling out your dough: After chilling your "chubby disks" for at least an hour, you want to take them out and gently tap them with your rolling pin. Kate says this is to kind of jar it awake and let it know you mean business. You want to put a nice amount of flour down on your pastry cloth, and roll out slowly (without worrying about cracks) from fingertips to palms, out and back. Brush off the extra flour as you go with a pastry brush. Kate says you want the pie dough "as thin as glass and only as large as it needs to be." That's how you know when you're done.

Forming Our Pie!

And now that you're inundated with tips and advice, here is the recipe for Kate's award-winning crust. I will say that nothing could ever replace sitting across from her and watching her make it herself. And I look forward to one day actually taking her longer participation course. Maybe if we all start stalking her and sending her emails, she'll decide to take this pie-crust madness on the road. Until then...

Kate's Infamous Pie Crust

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups King Arthur Unbleached White Flour (red bag)
8 Tbsp. leaf lard, cut into various small pieces, pea to walnut size
8 Tbsp. Irish butter, cut into various small pieces, pea to walnut size
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
6-8 Tbsp. ice water (this is an average--Kate's used anywhere between 3-15 Tbsp. at a time)

Method:
1. Combine all ingredients except the ice water in a large, cold bowl.
2. With clean hands, blend the mixture together until it looks like course meal with some lumps in it. Lumps=flaky pie!
3. Sprinkle ice water over mixture and stir lightly with a fork.
4. Squeeze a handful of dough together. Mix in a bit more water if it doesn't keep together.
5. Divide the dough in half and make two chubby disks about 5 inches across. Wrap each disk separately in plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour.
6. Take out one disk and put on a well-floured board. Sprinkle some flour onto the top of the disk and thump the top several times. Turn it over and thump the other side.
7. Sprinkle more flour onto the top of the crust if needed to keep the pin from sticking and roll the crust out from the center in all directions. When it's an inch or so larger than your pie pan, fold the dough over the top of the pin and lay it in the pie pan carefully.
8. Don't worry if the crust needs to be patched together; just paint a little water where it needs to be patched and "glue" on the patch pieces.
9. Put the filling in the pie and repeat the process with the other disk.

Notes on Filling and Baking: fill with your favorite fruit filling. For a peach pie similar to the one we made in Seattle, use adequate peaches, a pinch of salt, 2.5 swipes of nutmeg (this is the one spot where she seemed quite precise), 1/2 cup sugar, 1/3 cup flour, and 1 1/2 tsp. quick cooking tapioca. Then, crimp edges and cut vent holes. Paint egg white wash on top of pie and sprinkle with a little sugar. Then bake for 15 minutes at 425 F. Reduce heat to 350 F and bake for 35 minutes more.

Then, as Kate says, "Eat Pie, Be Happy."
For more pie musings from Kate, you can check out her blog Art of Pie for more pie musings.

Run through your Thanksgiving menu in your head, right now. Something in there is making you nervous. Very nervous. What it is? You can admit it. It's not a phobia, more like an...inadequacy, a fear of never being as good as grandma, a lingering humiliation from that one year you tried and the knife wouldn't even cut through the bottom crust, so rock-like it was. Or when the dough glued itself to the counter in a rebellious mound, refusing to roll and instead sticking to every surface save the pie pan. But yes, it's real. We call it Fear of Pie-ing. And that's why I'm here, your Pie Therapist on call.

Let's get it straight: no one really worries about the filling. They might wonder if the apples should be cut thick or thin, whether to thicken with cornstarch or flour. But inevitably, it's the crust that strikes fear in the heart of grown men and women, even those who can whip out an osso bucco or tom kai gai with aplomb. They hit up the bakery, they settle for those nasty frozen pre-made crusts, they make crisp and cobbler instead. I'm here to tell you: there is NO magic about making pie crust. It takes four ingredients, about 20 minutes or less of hands-on time, and the results are so flaky, so buttery, so sublime, you will amaze your loved ones (and yourself) for life.

Oh, easy for you to say, I hear you muttering. You grew up making pie with Mom, pushing a crumbly handful of dough into a little Pyrex dish so you could dig into your very own pie for dessert. Fair enough. The challenge was this: could two urbanites, one a non-cook, the other a non-baker, turn into confident pie-bakers after a single session with the Pie Therapist?

The first patient was Kevin, a psychotherapist, who lives in the Castro. Although he has a longtime partner, he has what I think of as the bachelor fridge: limes and condiments. When I arrive with my bag of equipment, he tells me that he had to wake up his sick upstairs neighbor to borrow a pie pan. I realize quickly never to assume what someone will have in his kitchen. In this case, what's missing is anything like a mixing bowl. We make do with a small saucepan and a couple of pasta bowls.

First, of course, a little therapeutic assessment. His mom was a busy single working woman with no time for baking. Grandma, on the other hand, was a fantastic cook and a great baker, whose pies were memorable. Unfortunately, her recipes passed on with her, and no one in the family has been able to come close. Kevin's sole kitchen skill? Making a mean margarita, and happily, he demonstrates. We put on the Loretta Lynn and get busy.

First up, the dry ingredients. Flour, a little salt, a little sugar, stirred together in the pot. A glass of ice water, set aside. He's bought fancy butter, a good thing, in this case the high-butterfat, European-style butter from Straus Creamery, Marin's organic dairy. I tell him I've met the Straus family and their happy grass-roaming cows, and we rub up a little locavore glow, helped along by the tequila. Then the butter is cubed and tossed into the flour so that each cube is coated.

"Now, hold your hands out in front of you, palms up, like a statue of Jesus," I tell him, and we scoop our fingers, palms up, down and up through the butter-chunked flour. "Now, pick up a butter cube between your thumb and fingertips. Flatten it out to a little butter nickel, and drop it back into the bowl."

Keep scooping, aerating the flour as you go, and flattening out your butter nickels. The trick is to keep everything light and airy--no squeezing, no mashing. You don't want paste, you want a crumbly mixture of flour layered with shards of cold fat. As long as you keep your palms facing up and only your thumb and fingertips working the dough, all is well. Stop when it looks somewhere between peas and rolled oatmeal, chunkier than you might imagine, and definitely before it gets to to the dry-cornmeal stage most cookbooks recommend.

So far, so good. Now, the water to make the dough: four or five tablespoons, mixed in lightly with a fork. Then sprinkled in, a tablespoon at a time, maybe 8 to 10 tablespoons in all. Pick up a handful of dough, and squeeze gently. It should come together in a ball that holds together but isn't wet or gluey. Err on the side of slight crumbliness, if you must.

Once the dough holds together, it goes into the pie-baker's friend, the gallon-size resealable bag. Dough firmly pushed down into a round, air pressed out from the bag and sealed, then into the freezer for 20 minutes, or the fridge for an hour (or overnight). While not absolutely necessary, it relaxes the dough and firms up the butter, increasingly flakiness and making it less likely to stick while rolling or shrink during baking.

The dough comes out and is divided in half, with the second half going back in the fridge. Onto a lightly floured board, we press our dough-lump into a roughly round patty. "A rolling pin makes life easier," I tell Kevin as I pick up my wooden pin. "But then again, I've also rolled out a lot of pie crusts with a wine bottle."

I hand him the pin and tell him to think of the dough as a sun, with rays radiating out from the center. "Don't roll back and forth like you're paving a highway. Roll from the center to the edge, around and around so you make an even circle. And after every few rolls, loosen the dough with a spatula, so it doesn't get in the habit of sticking."

He rolls and rolls, and soon we've got a circle a couple of inches bigger than our pan. We loosen the dough, fold in half and in half again, and transfer it into the pan, since it's much easier to move a thick folded triangle of dough than a thin floppy circle. Unfold, press lightly, put in the fridge and repeat with the other half of the dough. The filling goes in--in this case, blueberries, mixed with sugar and a little cornstarch--the top is draped on and crimped, and it goes into the oven. An hour later, his partner is home, and they are two men with a hot pie.

Kevin is happy and amazed that it could be so easy. Scones, he wants to make next, and I tell him it's the same technique: mix the dry ingredients, cut in the butter, add liquid, then roll out and cut.

The next patient is Leslie, a great cook and a longtime cookbook editor and author. What could I possibly teach her? But baking, it turns out, is where she feels out of control. "Bread, cake, pie," is how she describes her hierarchy of baking fears. We decide to start at the bottom, with pie. In this case, she has bowls galore, but no pie pan, since she never makes pies. "I'm a crisp person," she admits. We go through the same steps, and I show her the fluff-it-up, palms-up technique. "Bring it up to God!" she laughs, and we agree. Surely there is pie in heaven, good pie.

It's apple this time, and we slice and mound the apples high while the crust chills. This crust is a little crumbly, and wants to crack and stick as we roll. I grab the baker's friend, plastic wrap (waxed paper works well too), and we slap a sheet of plastic between the rolling pin and the dough. Suddenly, everything's easy: the dough stops sticking and the cracks seal up. We fold and drape and crimp, and the pie goes into the oven. Leslie is ecstatic: she has conquered pie! An hour later, her family sits down to steaming slices. Her nieces battle forks for the last piece of crust on the plate. And the Pie Therapist packs up her rolling pin and slips out into the night, another job done.

All Butter Pie Crust
Yes, shortening is easier to work with. But honestly, it's not that hard to use butter, and the taste is so wonderful, there's no reason to bother with anything else. Anyway, if you're going to eat fat, eat honest tasty fat that tastes good.

As for baking times, it depends on the type of filling. Most double-crusted fruit pies can be baked at 375F for about 45 to 55 minutes, until crust in golden brown and filling is just bubbling up. For a single-crust pie, like pumpkin or pecan, bake at 350F for 30-40 minutes, until filling is just set but still a slightly jiggly, since filling will continue to set as it cools.

Equipment:
a large bowl
measuring cups and spoons
a large spoon for mixing
a pie pan (metal, glass, or ceramic)
a rolling pin
resealable plastic bag or plastic wrap

Ingredients:

Makes: Enough for a 9-inch 2-crust pie

2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
2 sticks (8 oz, 1 cup) butter, chilled
8 to 10 tablespoons ice water
extra flour for dusting

Preparation:

1. In a large bowl, sift or whisk together flour, salt, and sugar.

2. Cut butter into 1/2-inch cubes. Toss butter cubes into flour mixture. Rub butter cubes between your thumb and fingertips, palms up, until butter flattens into little flour-covered nickels. Keep scooping up flour and butter cubes and flattening into nickels until all butter is flattened into shards.

3. Lightly stir in half the water. Add the rest in drizzles, stirring and scooping dough until it just holds together; you may not use all the water. Squeeze a handful of dough together; it should hold together without crumbling.

4. Scoop dough into a gallon-size resealable bag. Flatten dough into a thick patty, press air from bag and seal. Chill for at least an hour in the refrigerator, or 20 minutes in the freezer. You can make your dough up to 2 days in advance, keeping it in the refrigerator, or store for up to a month in the freezer.

5. To roll out dough, sprinkle a wide work surface with flour. Divide dough in half and shape into a round. Rub rolling pin with flour and roll out into a thin, even circle, loosening dough frequently with a spatula. If dough is hard to roll or cracks, it may be too cold. Let it warm up for a couple of minutes, then try again. Put a sheet of waxed paper or plastic wrap between your rolling pin and the dough if dough is very sticky.

6. Loosen dough with a spatula. Fold in half, and then in half again. Transfer to pie pan and press lightly into the pan. Trim so dough is nearly flush with edges of pan. Put in the fridge and roll out second half of dough.

7. Put filling into pie pan, top with top crust, and seal edges together, crimping in whatever decorative fashion you like.

Note: For a single crust, use 1 1/4 cups flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 1 tbsp sugar, 8 tbsp butter (4 oz/ 1/2 cup), 3-4 tbsp ice water

Listen to me: good fat makes good pie crust.

Books like The Pie & Pastry Bible, Cookwise, and others make a big fuss about technique. Freeze the butter, freeze half the butter, use only butter, use butter and shortening, roll it into shards, cut it into cubes, chill the dough, chill it again, on and on and on, til anyone would be convinced that you need an advanced degree from Pie Crust U to turn out anything worth eating.

But you know what you really need? Your two hands, some flour, a little salt, butter, and lard.

Yes, lard. Good lard, which is to say, rendered leaf lard made from happy pigs who spent their lives outside doing happy piggy things. In New York City, I used lard from Flying Pig Farm in the Berkshires. Here, I get my tub o' lard from Range Brothers, the pig-farming arm of Prather Ranch. It's creamy-white and waxy, with a faint but unmistakeably meaty-rich aroma, something like really good drippings. For baking, it's important to look for leaf lard, the very pure fat from around the kidneys, since it's denser and firmer and less strongly flavored than fat from the rest of the animal. Sloshy, slushy lard from other parts may make fabulous tamales, but leaf lard is for baking.

What I like best is a mix of butter (for tenderness and flavor) and lard (for suppleness and texture). I wouldn't use lard for everything, although you probably could. For creamy custard fillings, or delicate fruits high in sugar and acid (like peaches, plums, and cherries) I'd probably stick with a lighter, more crumbly all-butter crust. But for more mellow fillings--apples, pears, pumpkin, pecan--as well for savory chicken or meat pies, lard n' butter works like a dream.

Why? Three words: texture, texture, texture. Lard gives a silky flakiness more like a croissant than your usual crust. The meatiness disappears and all that's left are beautiful golden-brown shards breaking up under your eager fork. If you think crust is just there to hold up the filling, this will change your mind.

Obviously, I have strong feelings about this issue. So why not them to the test and see how my pie stacked up against the competition at the annual apple-pie contest held at the charmingly local Sebastopol Gravenstein Apple Fair. This annual August event is a fund-raiser for the excellent Sonoma Farm Trails program, as well as an all-around celebration of the Gravenstein apple, Sonoma rural know-how (from beekeeping to sheep husbandry), and middle-aged guys in Hawaiian shirts jamming loud bar blues, all under the spreading oaks of Ragle Ranch Park. (The Fair continues Sunday, Aug 16, from 10am to 5pm.)

Now, full disclosure: back in 2001, a pie of mine won the Grand Championship prize in this very contest. I entered again last year, though, and didn't even make it into the top three. The pie world: a fickle place!

One of the perks of winning in 2001 was returning as a judge the following year. Which meant I saw, and tasted, all the things that can go wrong: proud, beautifully formed crusts burnt chocolate brown; pale, pallid crusts that shouted "I'm made with Crisco!"; underbaked apples chalky with starch alternated with fillings flavored with weird things like lime zest and nutmeg. As Fran Lebowitz wrote in Metropolitan Life,

People have been cooking and eating for thousands of years, so if you are the very first person to think of putting fresh lime juice in scalloped potatoes, try to imagine that there must be a reason for this.

So I made a plain old pie, only with lard and with Pink Pearl apples, my favorite heirloom because not only are they tart and snappy, they're Barbie pink. Except that you wouldn't know it, because their skin is pale and creamy, nothing special, until you cut inside and wham! Fuschia!

The pie I made was pretty in pink and the crust divine, but all for naught: after hanging out at the fair for 2 hours, checking out the goat-milking demonstration and the 1940s tractors, sampling the multiple apple pie/cobbler/fritter stands, admiring the many face-painted children and their mom-jean-wearing moms and/or tattooed dads all happily gnawing on enormous barbecued Willie Bird turkey legs, the announcement was made, and my pie was not among those honored.

Oh, well. It might be a loser, but it's a beautiful one, at least. For pie, the best is always Mom's, and how can a contestant know what kind of pie the judges came home to on a sunny afternoon?

Life is short, though. Bake pie for the people who need pie, and don't worry about the ribbons.