There are so many opportunities to screw up pumpkin pie. But done right, it can win friends and influence people.
Meredith Rizzo/NPR
It was the best of pies, it was the worst of pies. I have baked many, many, many pies.
And when I first began making pumpkin pies this autumn, my results were at best inconsistent and, at worst, disastrous.
“One of the problems is most people make it once, maybe twice a year, right around the holidays, so they’re not very practiced at it,” says Dan Souza at America’s Test Kitchen. “And pumpkin pie is a little bit different in that it’s essentially a custard baked into a pie shell.” In trying to juggle both components, even experienced bakers may end up with a grainy, overcooked filling or a soggy crust, Souza says. “There’s a lot of places you can slip up.”
So Souza and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, a chef and author of The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, coached me through the process.
The Ultimate Cust…