Vinegar Pie Recipe: A Favorite!! (2024)

FAQs

What does adding vinegar to a pie crust do? ›

The acidic properties of vinegar inhibit gluten, some will say. This theory proposes that once the water and flour are combined, gluten starts forming, causing the dough to grow tough. Adding an acid, the theory goes, stops the gluten in its tracks and rescues the crust from toughness.

Why do some pie crust recipes call for vinegar? Vinegar can affect the gluten development in dough. Gluten gives dough structure, but too much gluten development can make dough tough. Acid can hinder gluten development; so, a bit of vinegar (or lemon juice) can make pie dough slightly more tender.

What Does Vinegar Pie Taste Like? No, vinegar pie is not bitter, tart, or sour. In fact, it's sweet! The flavor of your pie is a bit dependent on the type of vinegar you use (more on that below), but the combination of fruit vinegar, sugar, lemon juice, and butter creates a sweet, slightly lemony, and even juicy pie.

By inhibiting gluten development, vinegar allows for a more delicate crumb and a soft, moist texture (e.g. my Oreo cake recipe pictured below uses a touch of vinegar to create a melt in your mouth crumb!).

Start with chilled ingredients

Butter creates a sturdy, crisp pie crust. For this, it is important to keep all ingredients cold which will inhibit the development of gluten in the flour. Use butter right out of the refrigerator and add ice-cold water to make the dough.

Some bakers use milk or buttermilk in their pie crust. Thanks to their milk solids, both will help crust brown and add a bit of tenderness. But the classic liquid in pie crust is water — ice water, to be precise.

What does that vinegar do? The most common answer — that it affects gluten development — isn't actually that useful. If you had a mass spectrometer at home, you could measure the teensy difference vinegar makes in the tensile strength of gluten strands in the dough, which in theory makes it a bit more tender.

In our experience, sugar can also make the pie dough so tender that it's hard to roll out and transfer to your pan without breaking. Egg: This makes the dough more pliable and easy to roll out.

Be careful not to saturate the dough in too much liquid, because that will require you to restart it. If you don't have vodka on hand or you prefer baking with other spirits, you can sub in any 80 proof liquor for similar results.

Depression cake is a type of cake that was commonly made during the Great Depression. The ingredients include little or no milk, sugar, butter, or eggs, because the ingredients were then either expensive or hard to obtain.

Why is it called chess pie? ›

Another story that points to chess pie's English roots says that English cooks combined spoil-prone ingredients like butter and eggs with sugar to keep them from going bad and used that to create a pie that could be kept unrefrigerated in a chest. “Chest” became “chess,” and the rest is pie history.

We recommend adding 1-2 tablespoons (4-8 grams) of sugar or an artificial sweetener of your choice to the mix of vinegar. If you want a more natural sweetener, you can substitute sugar and artificial sweeteners for honey.

Apple cider vinegar is added to relax the gluten proteins in your dough and tenderize it. You can also substitute it with an equal amount of white vinegar. Cold Water: For pie crusts that are flaky, cold water is a must. Adding warm liquid would melt the shortening that we carefully cut into our flour for flakiness.

Mixing baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and vinegar (acetic acid) causes a chemical reaction that produces a salt (sodium acetate) and water, as well as carbon dioxide gas. In this demonstration, baking soda is placed in a balloon that is attached to a flask holding vinegar.

I also mixed a little cocoa powder with confectioners' sugar to sprinkle over the cooled brownies before serving. Vinegar: White distilled vinegar is added to the batter to react with the baking soda, causing the brownies to rise. The vinegar also helps activate the cocoa powder for a more chocolatey flavor.

Keep the dough ingredients cool

The key to standard pie crust is having pockets of fat surrounded by flour. But if that fat starts to melt and mixes with the flour, it can start to develop gluten, which can lead to a tough crust. To prevent this, keep everything as cold as possible.

The 11% gluten found in all-purpose flour yields the perfect tenderness in a crust. A little acid goes a long way: Add a little acid to your dough. Whether it be fresh lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, acid retards gluten development. One teaspoon will do the job, and it can replace some of the water you add.

Since store-bought pie crusts have a tendency to dry out, our experts suggest using a moistening agent to imbue the crust with texture and flavor. Wells ups the ante by adding crushed cookies: "My favorite way to upcycle store-bought pastry is to brush it with melted butter and sprinkle over crushed cookies.