My family used to own a factory. One of the traditional gifts for any new bride marrying in was a huge wooden box full of stainless steel ball bearings collected from a machinery to be used as pie weights.
I use the 'filled foil' method, but my fill is sugar. Just plain granulated sugar. Will go through 2 or 3 uses before it's the caramel color I use for baking cookies. Beans can't later be used for cooking, pennies are a pain to keep track of and can often heat with an odor. Pie weights cost money I don't want to spend. I always have sugar on hand, and it can always be used for something else.
I don't know why they didn't mention dried beans. I bake pies all year round, and have used the same beans for a year now. I also use parchment paper instead of foil. Two bags of beans, and they go all the way up the sides, for a perfect crust!
Was so happy to see this video up this morning! I had just six months ago purchased two of the four that you demonstrated and reviewed. I purchased both the chain weights (one strand) and the ceramic weights that won the top spot. Unfortunately my chain weights purchased from Amazon did not come with the cute little handy spoon tag, so I had to use tongs to retrieve it from the pie crust with tongs and 🙏🏻 it doesn’t slip and burn something/someone. Also, the crust under the chain weight was underbaked while the sides and crimp were perfect. If I have to place a sheet of aluminum foil under them, their attractiveness fades rapidly. Fail. The ceramic weights used with a piece of aluminum foil produced a perfectly set and baked pastry crust. I had ordered only one box to start with, but after I used them, I reordered two more, so deep dish pastries stay put and bake to perfection. Loved this one. Thanks, girls! ❤️
@@denisgonzalez3883 Since beans are often used (and have been since my grandmother's day) as pie weights, it would have been valuable to use them as a control.
The best suggestions I've gathered from the comments here and from thinking about it are small cheap pieces of stainless steel or aluminum (being lighter than steel) that you can easily buy in bulk like balls or nuts, dry rice or beans dedicated for the purpose, gravel or small rocks (you could pick it off the ground or get a small bag used for fish tanks at the pet store), marbles if you can find food-safe ones (those toy marbles from overseas may have lead or other contaminants in them), an appropriate sand, cheap clay balls that you can buy or make yourself if you have access to a kiln, and my favorite: sugar. If you bake with white sugar once it probably won't significantly change its character, but if you bake with the same sugar a few times you'll have slightly browned carmelized toasted granulated sugar which is delicious in many desserts. It's taste is more complex and less sweet. It doesn't clump and bakes just like white sugar so you can use it where a recipe calls for white sugar to add a little caramel flavor without using caramel, brown sugar, or molasses, all of which would greatly alter many recipes (due to different pH, water content, and/or temperature). You can read all about it here: www.seriouseats.com/2016/05/how-to-make-caramel-without-melting-sugar.html I'm sure the $24 ceramic weights are fine but I think I'd rather spend $2 on a bag of beans or rice or a block of clay, or else upgrade to a bag of indestructible stainless steel which would still probably cost less than commercial loose pie weights if you're buying a few pounds of the right stuff. You may be able to get clay or gravel for free off the ground. But I won't knock the ceramic pie weights ATK picked. They're prettier than the improvised alternatives and someone who bakes a lot may really enjoy having them. They seem like they could be a nice gift item to upgrade a frugal friend from the jar of old beans they've been using for the last decade. At $24 for the set of four that ATK recommends, it's not an extravagant purchase. It's just that we know the extra cost is for aesthetics, not an increase in baking performance. But the way the things we interact with look and feel is a real concern and it's often worth it to spend a little extra money to have finer things even if they don't do more than look better. We may enjoy them more. I know there are many bakers who would rather feel like they have professional equipment rather than something they improvised like a jar of beans or a bag of steel nuts from the hardware store, even if they work just as well. I may be too frugal to buy something as luxuriously unnecessary as commercial pie weights for myself, but if I baked pies regularly I'd appreciate good ones as a gift and would enjoy using them instead of any improvised alternative. Unless I start using more toasted sugar... After considering the subject I now think it's likely that I'll never need any pie weights at all, and probably wouldn't use them if I had them, because I should instead be incorporating more toasted sugar into my baking. Toasted sugar tastes good. Many people deliberately toast sugar, but using sugar as a pie weight you can get the toasting done "for free". Two birds with one stone. One of my favorite bakers, Stella Parks ("BraveTart"), wrote the guide to toasted sugar that I linked above and swears by the pie weight technique: www.seriouseats.com/2016/10/how-to-blind-bake-a-pie-crust.html
Very good points Paelorian, and the caramelised sugar tip is brilliant. One other thing they didn’t give attention to was storage requirements, those aluminium baking beans take up a large amount of space. I’ve got a moderately sized kitchen, those or the ceramic balls would take up valuable space or have to be shuffled off somewhere and then would rarely come out.
Years ago, ignorant and inexperienced me bought a single box of ceramic pie weights that appear to be the same as the winner shown here instead of a chain simply because I thought that they would be more versatile by fitting into mini/personal pie, quiche or tart pans. Have I ever gotten around to using them? No. Have I dropped some of them and chased them all over the kitchen floor? Yes. Silly me didn't realize that I'd need 4 boxes worth of weights for a 9" standard depth pie! I wonder how many boxes it would take to fill a 9-1/2" Deep Dish Pie?
It's an interesting way of keeping things in order, but I still love my late grandma's made from scratch crust pies. Whether they looked crazy or not. She never had an issue. But then again she never got fancy with the sides. They still tasted good. I miss my grandma and her pies. 🤗🤗
Pinto beans. 2 packages. $1.50 reuse pretty much an eternity. I have also blind baked without weights. I have not had pie dough slump on me. Then when I pulled it out I gently pushed the center of the pie dough down with a fork.
Dried beans or rice is the way to go; every pastry chef uses them. Even when they get too burned to use anymore, it's just a couple of bucks to replace.
I have Mrs. Anderson's. I have more than one package, probably two or three. I think you need that many for most pies. Also, the package directions say to bake according to recipe and remove pie weights and bake for another five minutes.
I was wondering how the ceramic ball pie weights were used... now I know ! Someone posted on a Facebook Slingshot group about using them for slingshot ammo. I think I will just stick with the 3/8" clay ammo that Walmart sells in a big plastic bottle for about $800 (1500 count). My wife makes wonderful pies... she learned from her mother ! I asked her if she knew what "pie weights" were, and she had no idea, so I told her (from watching this video). She says she has never had an issue or need for them... suggested it may be because of how she first cooks the pie crust in the micro wave, before she sticks them in the oven.
Lucky for me years ago I collected pennies that were 95% copper, pre 1982. I do double up with the foil as they are heavy. And yes I learned this the hard way, one time my foil ripped and I had hot pennies going everywhere.
Is there gold in those aluminum beans? You could buy stainless weights from the tackle shop for less. And were talking stainless that has had a hole intent fully placed in the bean! Thank the planet for Mrs. Anderson!
Hooray for dollar stores and bags of marbles. Depending on your pie tray, you can often just sit a plain metal pie tin inside with just a handful of marbles to give it a little weight.
The chain might have worked better if it had more to it, or if you played fair and used 3-4x of it like you did for the loos ones.... It definitely looked way too small going in.
i like the idea of the chain ball it is honestly just too short. i feel like it would would had it been long enough to where you fill it up like the rest ceramic balls.
It is curious that they had no problem using 2-4 packages of other brands yet decided that they would only use the one dinky chain to test. Seems incredibly biased testing to me.
They used multiple packages of the aluminum beans and the ceramic balls. You’d think they could have tried multiple chains. That said. Beans. Rice. Both dirt cheap.
Great test, but I would have liked to see what I use; a bag or two of beans. Total cost about $1.25 and can be reused at least several dozen times. Keep them in a large zipper bag, and you're good to go.
I love this host and all her reviews. However if your going to explore a $100 aluminium option you should have provided the other end option, like dry beans or ? And grearheads love our toys but whos got time/ space for lots of little pieces that will need cleaning. 2 piece pie plate, normal size pie plate with perforated dark metal inset pie plate. Perfect crust every time. $7 @ mallwort more than a dozen years ago. Surely someone is still making that product. Lovely crusts ladies, great hosts. Lousy corporate friendly guide lines, How about some real hacks? Does the job and maybe some others as well, healthy, well made, cheap, easy to clean/maintain, beautiful. Your comparisons are shallow but at least we got to see and hear you and not that bossy cow thats usually on. I wish they would fund you to do real tool hacks. Corporate funding makes for limited truth,is thats whats happening here?
I'm Concerned about Alzheimer's disease from the aluminum . Why not just put a slightly smaller greased glass pie plate on top or use ceramic beads on coffee filter type paper ? Also if you are going to use foil or filter paper why not use inexpensive pea gravel ?
The crust of a pie is more important than people think, regardless of how yummy the filling is, if the crust is bad the pie won't be as good as it could be. I honestly can't figure out why there's so much shrinkage since I've never experienced it (a bit of shrinkage only) I've been making pies for 40 years, my crusts are tender & flaky, in the past I've sold my pies to local delis etc. The only crusts that I use weights for are butter based, my regular crust have never shrunk like the 2 shown. What is the reason for that extreme shrinkage?
Butter has water in it. Call the brands available to you to see what the butter fat content is. Bake with highest fat butter you can get. Or melt your butter and put in refrigerator. When solid drain water off it use in recipe if water is called for. That butter will still have shrinkage but no where near what it would have. Shortening crusts are easy. Butter taste better,lol.
Even Martha Stewart tells us to use beans. Promoting expensive pie weights isn't cool. It also take a lot more energy to make pie weights than it does to simply grow rice or beans, so your solutions are not green friendly either. Boooooooo.
I'm sure in many areas you could make clay weights with less environmental impact than growing the same volume of rice or beans. Clay occurs naturally and all you have to do is form it into the shape you want and heat it up to harden it. Plants can sometimes take a lot of water, energy, and labor to grow.
@@Paelorian I'm sorry, but you don't seem to realize that clay weights are not merely balls of clay. They have been shaped with a machine, powered by energy, and then fired at a high temperature to make them permanently strong and hard. That's a LOT more energy than it takes to grow a pound of beans or rice, and usually involves some form of fossil fuel to power the kiln in firing, as well as to shape the perfect balls.
I was wondering why? Pie weight's! But to everyone I was thinking a bag of pinto bean's as well 1st thing came to my mind! I do not want my grandmother's homemade Lemon chess pie smelling like bean's! To Worm party! I am guessing there is no leftover smell! Thanks guy's!
Sorry, but this is bull, you use 4 packages of the ceramic beads. Meanwhile you used only one chain. Obviously if you need to use that many ceramic beads you need to at least attempt an equal proportion of chain. Also why didn't you just prick the bottom and sides of the pie shell and bake that for a control.
this is where you lose credibility....buy pie weights,just use beans like countless people here will comment about. please do a review for the best " moss covered 3 handled family credenza"
