Useful Tools: Pie Weights

I recently baked a blackberry-raspberry tart, and needed to pre-bake the crust before adding the berry filling. How do you keep your tart crust from puffing up, you ask? Pie weights!

Useful Tools: Pie Weights

I think I just bought these at Bed, Bath & Beyond...or maybe it was at Kitchen Collection around the holidays...? Not sure now. Anyways, this was my first opportunity to make use of them.

I rolled out my pie crust, and fitted into a tart pan. Then I lined the pan with foil and put the pie weights in. Why the foil, you ask? To make it easier to remove the pie weights after baking, because they will be HOT. Get it?


Whether you use ceramic pie weights (which look like little, white, opaque, uneven marbles) or a stainless steel pie chain, it makes tart and pie shells easier to form. This keeps the dough from getting puffy, or bubbling up and making the bottom of the tart/pie uneven.

Catalogs carry this product, and while it may seem like something you don't really need, sometimes just using foil isn't enough to keep the crust in place in the pie pan. I speak from experience. No, really!

The reason I chose the pie weights is because I also have some mini tart shell pans, which I could divide the pie weights into, had I thought of it when I made these tart shells:




Yeah, I'll have to do that over again, using the pie weights, and taking photos of the finished product, which I also forgot to do in this case! LOL!

IN STORES:
Bed, Bath & Beyond

ONLINE:
Chef's Catalog
Bed, Bath & Beyond
Sur La Table
Williams-Sonoma
The Home Marketplace - pie chain