Bread Machine Adventures: Pie Crust

Continuing with making things other than bread in a bread machine, I made some pie crust using the "Pasta Dough" cycle. It was easier than doing it by hand and came out well. Here it is in the bread pan at the end of the cycle, which only takes 14 minutes:

I opened it up while it was going through the cycle to move things around. Some of it was getting stuck on the sides and not blending, like it was doing with the cookie dough. That seemed to help.

The recipe said it makes two crusts, so I made a 9" berry pie to use up the rest of the berries I had left over after making the jam. I think you could probably get three crusts out of it, actually. I had some pie dough left over after rolling out two thicker-than-usual crusts; I used the leftover dough to make a small cobbler in a ramekin. I think the crusts were a little too thick, so I'll try rolling out three instead next time.

I cut a pi symbol in the crust for Ed (it was 3/14--Pi Day).

Sorry, no "after" photos are available, but it looked like above, except baked, and tasted good.

I got the dough recipe from a bread machine manual I found online (same brand as ours but different model). It calls for either cold butter or shortening. I didn't have any shortening (and don't typically use it), so I used unsalted butter. For the filling, I used the Fresh Berry Pie recipe in the Joy of Cooking cookbook.

I plan to make another batch soon, so I can try a toaster pastry recipe with some of our jam. I'll post about that when it happens.

It might seem kind of lazy to let the bread machine mix your pie crust, but it was pretty fast, didn't make a mess, and turned out well. Works for me.