Baking is both an art and a science. I come from a long tradition of bakers. We take our treats seriously! Many years ago I was given Gramma’s recipe for pie crust. This recipe is a treasure. It includes secret ingredients which make the crust very pliable and easy to roll out. Besides its flexible nature, it is very flaky and tasty too. Every Thanksgiving I have successfully fulfilled my mission of making a homemade apple pie from scratch. You know it’s all about the crust. And it is worth the effort.
Recently I was asked by a friend if I would teach her how to make a pie crust. For some reason, she believed that this was a mysterious and difficult task with great risk of failure. I assured her that it was easy to do. Few ingredients. Simple. I would be happy to show her how it’s done. Since I was visiting with her in Connecticut in the summertime, we decided to make a peach pie. Very fuzzy peaches were stripped of their skin, sliced and sugared. We couldn’t resist nibbling bits of sweet juiciness.
Ingredients were gathered and set out alongside of measuring tools. A workspace was dedicated for rolling out the dough. Maureen had purchased a small bag of flour. Just two pounds. I normally have a five pound bag which I measure from. But this day, I saw the small bag and read 32 oz. Well, I thought, 32 oz. is good. I won’t even need to measure. I need four cups of flour. A cup is 8 oz. 8×4=32. Simple. I dump the flour into the mixing bowl. Done.
And then we add the other ingredients, a little bit at a time, as I instruct Maureen. I tell her about how the dough will form into pea-size nuggets. This will signal us as to when the ingredients have been properly blended and the dough is ready for the rolling pin. But something isn’t right. No nuggets are forming. It just looks like flour. Slightly damp and a little lumpy flour. So, instinctively, I add a little more water. A spritz here and there. I continue to encourage Maureen to mix the flour, waiting for the dough to take form. But it’s not really happening. And then it occurs to me…32 oz. is not 4 cups of flour!!!! Now I remember that 16 oz. is 4 cups of confectioner’s sugar! What was I thinking? Sugar is not flour and 16 oz. is not 32! But the real question is….how many cups of flour did I put in this bowl?
I decide to compensate for the extra flour…but how much? Maybe it’s an extra cup so I consider that I should add more shortening and a little more water. Now the dough is beginning to form and it’s getting bigger and bigger…beginning to fill the bowl. It starts to look “right” and I hope for the best. Forming the dough into a ball, I place it on the parchment paper and ask Maureen to roll it out to see what happens. It’s working. We are able to make something that looks like a pie crust. Not a good crust, but a crust nevertheless. And we have way more dough than we need for a double crust pie. Since we are both thrifty Yankees, we must not toss it out. We make a batch of crackers with the extra dough, seasoning them with olive oil, garlic and fresh basil from the garden.
In building construction, there is a saying, “Measure twice. Cut once.” Obviously, it also applies to baking! Maureen certainly had a good lesson in the art of pie crust making. She not only learned what to do, she learned what not to do. And she learned how to compensate for mistakes. I shared my story with my Aunt Alice, the baking queen. We also shared a good laugh! She turned to a well-worn and tattered cookbook, its pages stained by years of use. She did some research and found that depending on whether it was sifted or unsifted, 32 oz. of flour is equal to 6 to 8 cups! Oh my, double what I needed! She will never let me forget that one! Lesson learned. Slow down. Think before acting.
We learn lessons from the mistakes we make. Sometimes we learn how to fix those mistakes. Sometimes a mistake yields a special surprise. Sometimes mistakes make us laugh at ourselves. But mostly mistakes make us better, stronger, wiser. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes!
We’ve all made mistakes. I’m sure that you can recall a time when you made a mistake… a mistake that taught you something. Even though it may have been unpleasant, you can recall making a mistake that you learned something valuable from, right? I’d like you to appreciate the fact that mistakes are not only tolerable, but that mistakes are actually desirable, because we learn through making mistakes.
Your imperfect mistakes have been perfect opportunities for a wealth of learnings… an indispensable foundation to build on. So don’t be mistaken about mistakes. What I’d like you to consider is the benefit, of having the courage to be imperfect. If you’re living with the pain or frustration of making a mistake, you can look for the lesson learned. It really is all right to be human… and to make some mistakes…so that you can learn and grow. And so that you can make better pies!