Today is the day—that day where I have officially moved blogs!

Thanks to my trusty web wrangler/husband, the new blog is up, running, and looks almost exactly like my old blog. It took a lot of work and some mental gymnastics (him) and some cursing (me), but all my old entries live here now, and I’ve even been able to import the Livejournal comments, although some of them are strangely out of order.

In light of the time and effort D spent helping* me move everything, I felt that at the very least, I owed him baked goods. And I also owed this blog an inaugural entry. And then I thought, why don’t I kill two birds with one post? So, in a flurry of efficient metaphorical bird-killing . . . here we are.

Over the years, I’ve talked a lot about pie pastry, and enough of you have emailed asking for tips that I’ve even included my particular recipe in the FAQ on my site.

Today, I’m going one step farther. Today, I’m providing a handy illustrated guide.

First, what you will need:

• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup shortening (I like the kind that comes pre-measured in stick-form, like butter—one stick = one cup.)
• 6 tablespoons cold water

Whisk the flour and salt together in a big bowl, then cut the shortening into the flour mixture using a pair of butter knives (you just drag them through the bowl in opposite directions, cutting the shortening into smaller and smaller pieces and letting it get caked with flour). Cutting the dough like this takes a little longer, but the finished texture is super-flaky because the flour doesn’t get over-mixed.

After the mixture starts to look like coarse crumbs with some pea-sized lumps in it, like so:

add the cold water and blend with a rubber spatula, making sure to scrape all the drier stuff off the sides of the bowl and into the mix.

When the dough is blended so that is sticks together, divide it into two halves.

Roll out one half and then the other (or, if you’re making an open pie, wrap the second half in cling-wrap and save it in the refrigerator). I like to roll out the dough between two sheets of parchment paper.

Here is the rolled-out dough and my weird pie plate (pie plate courtesy of Maggie, who loves to remind me that I’m weird, but is forgiven because she also enables my compulsive baking).

Carefully line the plate with the rolled-out dough. (If you tear the dough, you can always patch it, but it’s easier to avoid that eventuality if you can.)

After the plate is lined, add your filling of choice. I’ve used canned cherry filling, which makes this a super-easy pie.

The next step is to cover and vent the pie so the steam can get out. I always seal the edges by hand, but some people like to crimp the crust using a fork or the handle of a butter knife.

Bake for however long and at whatever temperature is appropriate for your filling, and ta-da!

A thank-you pie.

*You know what this means by now. He did it. He did it all.