Baking beans, also known as pie weights, are an indispensable baking tool that helps create crisp, perfectly shaped tart and pie crusts. But what exactly are baking beans and how do you use them? This guide will explain everything you need to know about these little culinary wonders.
What Are Baking Beans?
Baking beans are small dried beans or weights that are used to weigh down pastry when blind baking. Blind baking involves baking a pastry crust before adding the filling. The beans prevent the dough from puffing up and hold it in shape while it bakes.
Common types of baking beans include:
- Dried beans – pinto, navy, black beans
- Rice – white or brown rice grains
- Ceramic beads
- Metal weights
Dried beans and rice are inexpensive options. Ceramic and metal weights are pricier but reusable. Ultimately, any small weight that can fit inside the pastry will work.
Why Use Baking Beans?
Baking beans serve multiple functions:
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Prevent puffing and shrinking The beans weigh down the middle and edges to keep pastry flat as it bakes, This results in straight sides and crisp bottom crust
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Allow even baking: The beans conduct heat evenly across the surface for thorough, uniform cooking of the crust.
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Easy removal Beans keep the raw crust from sticking to the pan, allowing easy removal.
Without beans, crusts tend to slump, stick to the pan, and overcook in certain spots.
How to Use Baking Beans
Using baking beans for blind baking is straightforward:
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Line the pastry crust: Line it with parchment paper or foil. This will cover the beans.
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Fill with beans: Spread beans evenly across the bottom and slightly up sides. Use enough to fully weigh down the pastry.
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Bake the crust: Remove beans and lining after baking; the crust is now ready for filling.
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Cool and store beans: Allow beans to cool fully before storing to reuse.
Tip: Spray foil or parchment with nonstick spray so it peels off easily after baking.
Can You Use Other Weights?
While baking beans are ideal, you can improvise with other items:
- Uncooked rice, barley, lentils
- Nuts
- Sugar, salt, sand
- Pennies or nickels
- Pie bird – ceramic bird-shaped weight
The key is to use something heavy that won’t stick to the crust. Items may leave behind residue, so baking beans are preferred.
What Can Baking Beans Be Used For?
Baking beans are versatile and can blind bake:
- Tart shells
- Quiches
- Mini pie crusts
- Savory custards
- Galettes
- Strudels
- Filo dough tarts
Anything with a pastry crust can benefit from beans for support during baking.
Baking Bean Tips
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One pound of beans per 9-inch tart pan is sufficient.
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Reuse beans until they start to break down. Fresher beans work best.
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Store beans in an airtight container in a cool, dry spot.
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Don’t eat beans after using them for baking. They may pick up pastry residue.
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Check crust a few minutes early; heavily loaded pans bake faster.
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For metal pans, ceramic beads prevent noise from beans rattling.
Can You Skip the Baking Beans?
You can bake a raw crust without beans by:
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Pricking all over with a fork to allow steam to escape.
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Pressing foil tightly on the bottom and up sides.
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Watching closely to prevent over-browning or puffing.
However, beans do the hard work for you. Pastry cases won’t have the same straight, professional appearance when omitting baking beans.
Perfectly Baked Blind Crusts Every Time
Next time a recipe calls for blind baking a crust, reach for your trusty box of baking beans. Weigh that pastry down and let the beans do their job for wonderfully crispy tart and pie shells. Your fillings will shine brightly nestled into a pre-baked shell, all thanks to this simple yet ingenious baking technique.
What is blind baking?
Ceramic Baking Beans in unbaked pie crust. Ready for blind baking. (KROCKSHEAT Ceramic Baking Beans – Amazon)
On The Great British Baking Show, Mary Berry, Prue Leith, and Paul Hollywood all complain about soggy bottoms and make a big deal out of it. Their eyes are like hawks for this mistake, which is luckily very easy to avoid by baking the pastry, crust, or shell without a lid. It’s a shame to put so much work into a pie and not have it turn out. Even if the soggy bottom isn’t the end of the world. So what is this blind baking and why does it involve baking beans?.
Simply put, blind baking is pre-cooking a pies crust. This is done to solve 1 problem, soggy bottoms, which can occur for a few reasons.
When you bake things like fruits or meats that are more likely to have juices in them, the crust might not cook all the way through. During the baking process water needs to evaporate before the crust starts to cook. This may take a long time, and the bottom may turn brown, but the part of the pastry between the bottom and the filling will still be raw. If the crust was already baked, it may soak up some of the liquid. This will need to dry, but it will dry out a lot faster than baking.
Second, if you’re cooking something that doesn’t need to be in the oven for a long time, the crust won’t have time to bake. The crust only needs 15 minutes at 325 degrees, while the filling needs 20 minutes at 375 degrees. Math and physics are not on your side. Blind bake the crust, take it out of the oven, put your pie in place, and then bake it at the right temperature for the right amount of time. Just like that, Robert is your fathers brother.
How do you blind bake?
Lucky for you there are myriad ways to blind bake a pie. Most of them are at 375 F for 20 minutes – just keep that in mind.
First – the wrong way – put your pie crust in the oven. If you do this the crust is simply going to shrink in and crumble under its own weight. Before it is baked the crust simply does not have enough integrity to hold itself up. It will weaken and fall into the middle, even if it is on the edge of the pie pan. Bonus horror – it is also going to bubble up in the middle. So if youre looking for an amazing way to ruin a pie crust – you. are. welcome!.
We now know why we need to blind bake and why putting a pie crust in the oven alone isn’t enough. Let’s look at some creative ways to fix these problems. Basically, we need something that will hold the bottom down, keep the sides up, and be about the same size as the filling. It shouldn’t stick to the crust.
The wont stick to the crust is the easy part of this equation. Putting down a layer of parchment paper (Reynolds Single Sheet Parchment Paper on Amazon – love these things) will keep anything from sticking to your crust. Enjoy step 1 – line the pie crust with parchment paper.
Step 2 is to find something to accomplish all the other tasks. And here you have some options. Putting a second pie pan on top of the parchment that is the same size as the first one might be the easiest thing to do. You can bake this at 350F because the metal conducts heat well. The shape and weight are almost perfect, and it’s almost impossible to mess up (except for washing the bottom of a pie tin). You can see bakers on The Great British Baking Show using the same method when they want to keep puff pastry from rising too much.
Other things you can put over the parchment paper include: sugar, rice, or literal beans. All of these can’t really be eaten in other meals after being used for blind baking, so save them for other blind bakes. Lastly there are some made-for-the-task tools, one of which we have seen on The Great British Baking Show.
Some of these are blind baking pie crust holders, which look like the inside of your pie pan but are usually made of plastic, which I try to stay away from. Baking chains are usually made of metal beads on a cord that lie on top of the parchment paper and let the sides fall down. Metal baking beans – also known as baking weights are a decent option. Keep an eye out for anodized aluminum or stainless steel. Anodized aluminum transfers heat well and won’t leech into food, while stainless steel heats more slowly but doesn’t leech and can be washed in a machine. Other metals may be harmful. Lastly we have ceramic baking beans. The Great British Baking show provides ceramic baking beans to their bakers for all their blind baking needs.
Baking beans holding it down & ready to bake.
Baking Beans
FAQ
What can I use if I don’t have baking beans?
What is the purpose of baking beans?
Are baking beans edible?
Can you use any beans for baking beans?