Pie.

On Friday, the King Arthur Flour company, based in Vermont, took its baking demonstration road show to the Portland, ME Holiday Inn by the Bay, which also hosts the fantastic Chili and Chowder Challenge. The King Arthur people do free demos throughout the country with the opportunity to ask questions, and at the competitive price of $0.00 I couldn't pass up an excuse to leave the house in the middle of the day. I even slipped out of my old-man slippers and into my young-man sneakers. Plus I had visions of free samples floating in my head.

At noon they were demonstrating how to make tasty, flaky pie crust and chocolate tart crust. Stasia and I made some pie for Thanksgiving last year so, um, experts? But as the Germans say, "man lernt nie aus," aka "you never stop learning." I never even started learning, so this would be as good a time as any.

The conference room was good-sized and most of the seats were filled, so I'd say maybe 100 people were there. I stood in the back just to prove I could still stand, and I lowered the average visitor age by 20 years, easily. I suppose most youngsters (i.e. the non-retired) are either working or, I dunno, sleeping? at midday on a Friday, so I infiltrated the secret baking circle at great personal risk of embarrassment to bring you the hottest tips in pie-baking.

Our very nice, teachful teacher worked at the front of the room and we followed her movements on a projector screen (German word for projector: "der Beamer," which does in fact come from the verb "beamen," or, "to beam." The Germans are funny like that). We had little recipe/tip pamphlets so we could follow along. I wished I had brought a pen to take more notes but when I got home I jotted down as many tips as I could remember. Those tips will follow.

After the demonstration, during which our teacher made everything seem so simple that I was chomping at the bit to try it myself, just because I'd be a fool not to take advantage of a treat which practically bakes itself when under the manipulation of a trained professional and no one else, they had a raffle. They had bags of flour, boxes of mixes, and sundry nifty gifties to give away. I won a box of Cranberry-Orange scone mix, but I just quietly raised my hand instead of making a happy sound as suggested by the hosts. I thought about saying "happy sound" but I didn't want them to revoke my winning raffle ticket for mocking the system.

Scones are something Stasia and I learned to make from scratch in London (from our Taiwanese-Canadian roommate, C.J., naturally) but hey, free mix. On our way out, they also gave us little rubber scrapers (this sounds lame but makes me very excited to scrape and level and, well, maybe mix a little and that's it) and $10 gift cards (off a purchase of $20 or more, but flour never goes out of style).

So basically I made a tidy profit. And I'm likely to buy King Arthur Flour (again, since I'm sure we have some already) so good marketing ploy, King Arthur Flour. I haven't put my newfound pie knowledge to use yet, but when Stasia gets home tomorrow I promise that will change. Callaghan Test Pie on the horizon! That's all from your intrepid baking correspondent for now, so enjoy the tips I could remember, most of which are probably painfully obvious to those of you who use that mysterious organ in your heads for something other than storing Office Space trivia:

- Use butter, not something like shortening. Specifically cold, cold butter, along with ice cold water. You don't want the butter melting from over-working either. You want butter spots in your dough.

- Don't scoop flour directly with your measuring cup. This compresses the flour, meaning you scoop extra flour, which can really add up in a large recipe. Use a separate scoop to pour flour into your measuring cup, then use a flat surface (such as a handy dandy rubber scraper, boo-yah!) to scrape lightly across the top to level the flour.

- Another way to prevent bad measurements is to weigh your ingredients, which always wins out over just eyeballing if you want better quality. But it requires a kitchen scale and patience, neither of which I have in abundance.

- Here's a bad habit Stasia and I have: using the solids-measuring cups for liquid as well. To get the right amount with these measuring cups that come right to the top, you have to fill them straight to the top perfectly, which is hard to do and you're probably going to spill some before getting it in the bowl. Be sure to use the taller, see-through pitcher-style measuring cups with multiple lines so you can get a better measure and pour. As an example, if you're trying to measure 1 cup of water, use a measuring tool the has lines for 1 cup and 2 cups so you can see when you've reached 1 cup. Like the previous tip, this requires some sort of forethought, willingness to dirty extra dishes, and perhaps even patience, reducing its attractiveness.

- After you wrap your ball(s) of dough in plastic, flatten the ball so it will cool faster and more evenly when you put it in the fridge before rolling it out. You can also put the dough, or the pre-made pie crust, or even the pre-made pie in the freezer and keep it for about 6 months with no discernible loss in quality. If you take a pre-made pie out of the freezer you can put it directly into the oven, just add 20 minutes extra baking time to account for thawing.

- Don't roll your dough back and forth. Go out from the center in different directions, like the rays of the sun. Also, don't roll over the edge of the dough so your pin hits the surface. This can compress it oddly and lead to misshapen, cracked edges.

- Put your pan over above the dough so you can see if the dough is rolled out enough to then hang over the edges of the pan. Once the dough is rolled out properly, fold it in half, then in half again. (At this point, if you're working with the top crust, make four little steam-release cuts in the dough near the point of the triangle so you'll end up with the steam vents near the middle when you unfold the dough.) Place that rounded triangle of dough in the pan with the point of the triangle in the center, then simply unfold your dough to get it safely in the pan.

- If you're making a double-crust pie with a top crust, make sure you roll out and prepare both crusts first. Then set the bottom crust in the pan, dump in the filling, and put the top crust on right after. This allows you to pop the pie into the oven right away, which prevents the bottom crust from absorbing a lot of extra moisture from the filling.

- Use a glass/Pyrex pan for pies so you can actually see the bottom of the pie crust and ensure it's getting baked thoroughly. Also, in a conventional bottom-heated oven, put the pie on the bottom rack (not the floor of the oven but the bottom rack level) for 20 minutes to start then move it to the middle. This helps set the bottom. (If you're using a convection oven, which uses air to heat the oven equally, set the temperature about 25 degrees Fahrenheit lower than you would for a normal oven.)

- If you use frozen fruit for a pie, add up to 3 tablespoons of corn starch to thicken the filling.

- A pre-made but unbaked pie can last in the freezer for up to 6 months. Flour in a sealed container can last up to a year. Whole wheat flour should be frozen since it has the wheat germ and enzymes which can spoil easier.

- There's a white whole wheat flour which can fool whole-wheat -haters into thinking they're getting the normal stuff.

- Trivia: vanilla comes from a type of orchid native to Mexico. The plant has since been successfully grown in other countries, including Madagascar, which now produces the majority of the world's vanilla, called Madagascar-Bourbon vanilla. Bourbon refers to the region in which it's grown. I always thought it was alcoholic vanilla. I still like it, but I definitely like it less now. I'll have to add my own bourbon in the future.