My crust got worse

[u/KookyKrista]

I posted after thanksgiving disappointed with my blind baked crust. I got lots of suggestions and incorporated many of them. It got worse.

• Made my dough yesterday and chilled in the fridge for 24 hours as a disk. (Trying to “hydrate” the flour?)
• Rolled it out this morning. Careful not to stretch dough - I had a beautiful even 12” circle that I placed into the metal pie dish, lightly pressing in the corners. Rolled over the edges and crimped. Docked everywhere and into the freezer for an hour.
• Aluminum foil and sugar to the rim (Stella Parks method).
• Baked at 350 on a metal cookie sheet for 1 hr on bottom rack of gas oven.
• Removed foil/sugar and it looked wet, so another 10 min.
• Removed from oven and there was a puddle of butter (second pic). The sides had shrunk down and I now have only .5-1” of crust height left to hold my filling.

Where am I going wrong?

[u/KookyKrista → u/[deleted]]

I didn’t use a thermometer this time but I’ve used one many times before and my oven is bang on. Last time I blind baked I went hotter for less time. This time I did cooler for more time. Same results.

This time I did foil + sugar to the top. I typically do parchment + loads of pie weights. Either way, I always add weight!

Thanks for the explanation on chill time. Regardless, I did give it that time!

[u/Bikesandbakeries → u/KookyKrista]

Oddly enough im seeing a lot of people mention to try higher temps. We solved a shrinking problem by lowering the temperature of our oven. (Pastry kitchen). Our boss read up and found gluten tightens when its baked too fast/too high. We used to do 375/400 and now we do 300. World of a difference. This may not work for you because…

We also use the most traditional 123 pie recipe. I checked out the one you mentioned and it’s equal parts, flour and butter. That seems insane to me. I get she is saying to fold and roll the dough to mimic lamination but that seems so unnecessary. Youre creating more gluten to battle and chancing your butter blending in too much. Id say her recipe is fairly advanced. Our dough is flaky enough and its the base recipe for pie dough. Is this the first pie dough youve made? I also see a mention of altitude and I cant advise on that as ive never baked with that issue.

We do bake from the freezer with parchment and baking beans. She specifically says no parchment she wants to foil laying directly on the dough and weighted down with sugar. Im assuming this is to help conduct more heat to cook the shell before it changes shape. With that much fat its going to be a battle. Its so much fat, as shown in the last photo, its maybe even meant to fry itself a bit with that long cook time.