Petra Cox: I am Petra Cox with Moms Apple Pie Company in Occoquan, Virginia. Today, we are making pumpkin pie.

So, first, I am going to show you how to roll out the dough and make the bottom crust for your nine inch pie. Now, that we know how to process the pumpkin from scratch, we are going to go ahead and make that bottom crust. You can use a pre-made store bought crust from scratch, but in a previous video, I instructed you how to make a butter crust pie, and it tastes really great using real butter, instead of a shortening or margarine crust. So, first of all, you need a nice flat surface that you can roll pie crust on, and a little flour to keep the dough from sticking on the bottom there. You can just throw a little dough, I mean a little flour on there. I have some butter crust right here, that hasnt been rolled out. Just going to put one side on there, so that it has a nice covering of flour. I have a non-stick rolling pin right here. You can use any kind of rolling pin, whatever you have in your house. This is really handy, just because it makes, it very easy when it's a non-stick material. We are going to roll it one way and another way, flip it over, and when you continue to flip the pie crust over, it keeps the dough from sticking to surface you are working on. As it gets a little thinner, it's a little harder to flip over so, I just make sure that I can still move it around and I am not just rolling it right into the working surface. If you are not sure how big you need to make your round of dough, you can put your pie pin upside down and just make sure that it's going to cover it. Keep in mind that this is probably about an inch deep. So, that when you put it in, it's going to kind of sink to the bottom. You want enough space around so, that you can make a nice, decorative edge on your crust. Looks like I need to roll it a tiny bit more. My crust is probably less than a quarter of an inch thick, probably around, an eighth of an inch thick. That makes for nice crispy dough that cooks all the way through. I am going to put the pie, the pie tin upside down. This is a nine inch tin, and pull the edges around so that I can sort of pick it up, flip it, and do that without breaking too much of the dough. You do break it. You can take an extra little bit from the side and patch it up, ever so gently so that you dont sort of, bruise more of that crust.

At this point, you gently press the dough into the edges of the tin, and very gently with just a small pairing knife or something that isnt too sharp, I am going to make sure that I have probably about an extra half inch outside of the edge of the pan. Be very gentle because, I am cutting sort of, very lightly against my fingers. You can use the blunt edge of the knife, the part that isnt sharp. It's okay if when you cut the edges, they are not perfect because they are going to be folded over for your decorative edge anyhow.

So, here we have the pie crust in the tin, and you can see that it's about half an inch extra around the edges. For our decorative crust, I am going to fold that under. So now, that we have the edges folded under, I am going to use my thumb and my fore finger of my left hand and my pointed finger of my right hand to gently press an indent into the crust, so it has sort of a point on one side, and an indent in the middle. Since we are working with a very delicate butter crust it's not very hard to do. You dont have to use very much force at all.

So, now you have your bottom crust for your pumpkin pie. This is also something you can use in a chest pie, or any sort of cream pie, or a pecan pie. We use it as it is without doing any blind baking. We just pour the filling and then bake the pie, but if you need it for some sort of a pudding pie, or a cream pie, you can throw it in a 350 degree oven for about 15 to 20 minutes and you have a nice baked bottom crust. We are using it as it is for our pumpkin pie.

So, now you know how to make a bottom crust for your pumpkin pie and we can move on to the next step.