The Pie Guys Share Their Secrets to Pie Success

Chris Taylor and Paul Arguin, The Pie Guys, want to take the guesswork out of pie baking. The two cookbook authors, scientists and pie contest victors have learned a lot from rolling dough and traveling the nation—including that many people still struggle with baking pies.

You can (and should) grab their book, "The New Pie," for a variety of no-fail pie recipes, but if you want to learn the art of pie with them live, sign up for their three-part online intensive class, Picture Perfect Pies. It’s a rare opportunity to practice your pie skills and ask questions about any pie troubles that have been plaguing you. The classes are recorded, too, so if you miss one, you can watch it later, at your own pace.

And on a recent call over Zoom, they were nice enough to sit down for a bit of pie talk. Read on to learn how they got started, their biggest holiday planning tip, and what makes the perfect pie dough.

Why pie? What made you so passionate about this particular dessert?

Paul: The very first contest we ever did was a pie contest. It was soon after we got together, and Chris found [out] somewhere that there was going to be this pie contest in Dahlonega, Georgia. It was a very cute, little community affair.

They had two categories: sweet and savory. I did savory, Chris did sweet—and he won. We thought, “Hey, that's so much fun!” And so we started looking for county fairs and state fairs. And when we would do that, we'd enter all the categories, cookies, cakes, candies, breads, all of it—but also pie.

We found another competition called the National Pie Championship, and that's where we really started delving into pies. We quickly learned a lot about how that contest was run, how you needed to craft your pies to be successful there. We would just spend all of our free time thinking about how to craft pies, and how to bend them to your will to make them do what you wanted them to.

Chris: Because when you're competing, you really only have the one shot. We developed a lot of ways to make sure that our pies were foolproof in the crust, the baking and the filling. So they cut how we wanted, they baked how we wanted and they presented in a way that could be successful.

P: And that ends up really working for the home baker as well, because usually you're doing it for a reason. You're having Thanksgiving. You're having a dinner party. It's a gift. And again, it's just like the competition pie. You’ve got that one shot, and you really don't know if it worked or not until you make that slice. And if you take out that first slice and go, “Oh my gosh, the thickener is all wrong.” That's when you learn. But if you don't want that, that's what our recipes are for.

Why did you decide to dedicate an entire class to pie dough?

C: It's so integral to pie making. We published “The New Pie” and went on tour, and just from talking to people for so many years about pie we found that people are still intimidated by pie dough.

P: That's the reason they don't attempt pie at all. It's just the pie dough.

C: And so we want to take that session and really talk about what makes a perfect pie dough. We’ll talk about the importance of measuring and precision in your wet ingredients and in your dry ingredients. We'll talk about the methods, either by food processor or by hand, to not overwork the dough.

And then, how to store the dough and roll it out—especially rolling the dough out evenly. We talk about some tricks for that. If you don't roll out the dough evenly, and you have thin spots and thick spots, it's going to be raw or it's going to be overcooked. Then it's still not going to be successful. Even if you have a great dough, if you treat it poorly it's not going to come out the way you want.

P: Also, I think we found that people have been taught how to make pie dough poorly. There's so much bad advice and bad recipes out there with vagueness like, “Add between 1 and 37 tablespoons of water until it looks right.” If this is your first time making a pie, you go, “Well, I don't know what looks right.”

We actually give you the precision, we give you the numbers and the weights. We bust a lot of these myths that are out there. It's part science class—breaking down some of these issues and giving people solid ground to stand on—so that they can feel confident making their pie dough, making their crusts.

C: We're scientists by training, and this method works for us, but you don't have to be a scientist to make a successful pie. As Paul said, it gives you the reasoning of why you're doing something, and if something goes wrong—and eventually something will go wrong—knowing the science that goes into it can really help you figure out how to fix it or correct it.

Does the pie dough mixing method matter?

P: Yeah, the types of fats matter, the order in which you put them in. Let's say you coat a lot of the flour grains [with fat] initially. You're going to decrease gluten formation, which is good. And now you actually have license to be a little bit rougher with your dough. So there are different techniques, but what you're doing is accomplishing the same task—you want to be the one in control of how much gluten you're making. You want to prevent it from being tough, but it still has to have that structural integrity to hold together. There can be a couple of different roads to get to the same destination, but it’s got to be a well-devised path.

C: I know people have a lot of sources for recipes now—on Instagram, and TikTok and books, and they'll say, “Okay, well, I'm gonna do this recipe, but I'm gonna use this method, and try to piece it all together.” Then you wonder why it doesn't work. That's what's nice about doing a class all about pie dough is you can walk people through one [complete] method.

Do you have any tips on how to prepare pies in advance?

P: Yeah, I think planning is so important. In fact, what I always tell people is to start backwards. At what time do I want that fork full of pie? And now, start back-calculating as to when I need to do things.

C: How long does it have to chill? How long does it have to cool before it's chilled? How long did it bake before you had to cool it? Before you had to chill it?

P: Yeah, and then the steps you can do in advance. If I'm going to do one double-crust pie and two blind baked pies, now I know I need four discs of dough in order to accomplish that. I could make that months in advance, if I wanted to.

I can have my dough already in the freezer, and plan when I need to move it out of the freezer into the fridge so that it'll be ready to roll. And you just make a little calendar, a little schedule of all the tasks that need to be accomplished, including things like, when do I want to go buy my apples? Just to make sure that you have all your stuff. I think the organizational calendar is the most important step in all of that.

What pies do you like to show off with for the holidays?

P: There is one pie we go to a lot because we think it is kind of impressive. It's our Cheese Course Pie.

When we do a lot of recipe development, sometimes there are Chris-flavors, and sometimes Paul-flavors—this might be a purely Paul pie, and this a purely Chris pie. But The Cheese Course pie was one that was absolutely a 50/50 collab. I guess that's one of the reasons we like that one so much.

But what it is, is the flavors of the things you'd have after a fancy meal during your cheese course. It's a walnut crumb crust, fig jam that's cooked down in port and then the topping on it is a gorgonzola-mascarpone whipped topping. And it's not a savory pie. This is still a sweet dessert pie with all of those elements—and it is out-of-this-world fantastic. It always becomes the star of the party. It is such a great flavor combination. The link to that recipe actually might be on Milk Street's website. [Editor's note: Indeed, here it is!]

If a pie goes completely wrong, do you toss it or do you have tricks to save it?

C: It just depends on what the pie is. If it's a fruit pie and the thickener isn't quite where you want it—poof, it's a crumble. Because we don't expect a crumble to slice perfectly; you sort of spoon it out. That's one way to save a fruit pie that maybe isn't as firmly set as you'd like.

P: Depending on how bad and what went wrong. There's some things you just can't [fix].

C: If it’s a little dry on the edge, maybe just eat from the center. Like an overcooked pumpkin pie, for example. It's not a 9-inch pie, now it's a 6-inch pie.

P: Certainly, a minor cosmetic crack in a custard pie—that's what toppings are for. Even if you didn't intend to have a whipped cream topping on that pie, or a meringue, suddenly you do. If we have a little extra pie dough, use a cookie cutter and make a little decorative pie dough thing. Bake that off in the oven, and you put that [decorative dough] right over your little minor cosmetic crack.

There are some things that just don't work at all. I remember once I was trying to make a cherry custard. I thought that might be a nice thing, but I guess the red pigments in cherries, once combined with the yellow of egg yolks, make the most zombie gray color you could imagine. It was the ugliest pie. It tasted of cherry, it was a cherry custard, but it—

C: It couldn't recover from the appearance.

P: Yeah, you looked at it, and it made you sad and scared.

How do you want people to feel about pie?

C: I want them to feel that pie is a friend. That it's approachable. Some people think, oh, I want to make something—I'll make cookies or a cake. But once they have pie on that list too, going, “Pie isn't the struggle that I thought it would be. And if it's what I'm in the mood for, I shouldn't be afraid to make it.”

P: There are so many different ways [to make pie], between custards, pastry creams, mousses, cooked fruits, nuts. There's so many different ways to structure a pie. So even if you think you don't have enough time, you always have enough time to do a key lime filling or some ganache.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.
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Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Allie Chantorn Reinmann is a Digital Staff Writer for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street. She’s a Thai-American chef who earned her diploma for Pastry and Baking Arts at The Institute of Culinary Education and worked professionally for over a decade honing her craft in New York City at places like Balthazar, Bien Cuit, The Chocolate Room, Billy’s Bakery and Whole Foods. Allie took her know-how from the kitchen to the internet, writing about food full-time at Lifehacker for three years and starting her own YouTube channel, ThaiNYbites. You can find her whipping up baked goods for cafés around Brooklyn, building wedding cakes and trying her hand (feet?) at marathon running. She’s working on her debut cookbook and lives in Brooklyn, NY.