1,605 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 77 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies that are necessary for its operation.
By continuing to browse, you agree to their use (learn more...).

The right weight of pastry for a pie

Let's try to solve a thorny problem: How much dough will I need when I make my next pie?

You're planning to make a pie, you're going to use your favourite mould or circle, but how much pastry will you need to fill it completely with a well spread pastry, without being too thin, or on the contrary end up with a lot of extra pastry?

69 K 4.3/5 (42 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Baking Tips Weight Dough Pie Pan Diameter

Last modified on: March 20^th 2020

For this post Comments Lasts posts Follow

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

This is not at all obvious actually, as ideally once the mould is lined it should only stick out about 1cm.

pie dough sticking out of the pan

You can of course use your own judgement, but at home I often use a 22 cm diameter (the small one), or sometimes 26 (the large one), and in any case I always get a 300 gr cake. And of course sometimes the big one is good, and sometimes the small one is too much. Well, it's not a tragedy either, if I have extra dough, I take advantage of it to make a few more tarts and it's fine.

excess pastry pie

By the way, if it's shortcrust pastry, there will never be any excess pastry, because it will be eaten, as soon as my back is turned, by the raw pastry aficionados I have at home...

Well, it's not all that, but can we do a little better than au pif? Yes, it's a pastry chef's trick, this weight of dough thing, and as they are people of numbers, of rigour, of precision, of grams and degrees, they have invented a kind of magic formula for that, linked to the diameter of your mould. It looks like this:

Weight of dough needed (gr) = diameter of the mould (mm) + 20.

For example, you have a 22 cm mould => 220 mm + 20 = 240 => you need 240 gr of batter.
Another example, 26 cm mould => 260 mm + 20 = 280 => you need 280 gr of batter.

plum tart

Very simple, isn't it? Well, be careful we're only one cow away anyway, and if you're not comfortable with a rolling pin to roll out the dough feel free to increase the magic number, and go from 20 to 30, or even 40.

In summary: To determine the right weight of pastry you need with your tart tin, you can apply the "magic" formula: pastry weight in gr = tin diameter in mm + 20.

Lasts posts

Serving Temperature for Wine

When it comes to serving wine, you may (like me) have a fairly simple rule of thumb: red wine at room temperature, and white, rosé, and yellow wines in the fridge until it’s time to serve them. It’s very easy to remember, but it’s a bit simplistic, and you’ll see that there’s a much...
September 23^th 20268155

Hot Emulsified Sauces

In French cuisine, sauces are a very important part of a recipe—not just a side dish. In fact, they’re so important that, especially since the time of Auguste Escoffier, they’ve been classified into categories. And among these categories are “hot emulsified sauces,” or lukewarm ones. ...
September 9^th 20261,2335

Hot Dishes and Cold Dishes

When plating or serving a dish—whether hot or cold—on a plate, it’s very important to make sure they’re both the right temperature; in other words: if the dish is hot, the plate should be hot, and conversely, if the dish is cold, the plate should be cold. Is this really important? Let’s...
September 2^nd 20269713

In baking, cold is your friend

When you bake at home—especially when making pie crusts—you’ve probably noticed that it’s quite difficult to work with the dough when it’s hot. It gets soft, is hard to roll out, and breaks or crumples very easily. And this doesn’t just happen when it’s hot—even in a comfortable...
August 26^th 20269995

With vinegar?

When you buy a jar of pickles labeled “in vinegar,” you’re looking for their tangy, crunchy flavor to go with cold cuts, sandwiches, or salads. You expect to find small gherkins preserved in vinegar, with salt and herbs, but is that really the case?
July 15^th 20261,9544.8

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other articles you might also like

Kitchen ovens

You certainly have one in your kitchen, an oven, the essential tool for all kinds of cooking, whether in the kitchen of course, but also in pastry, bakery, pizza, and many others. Here is some information on its structure and operation.
May 16^th 202036 K4.4

The so-called "nervous" meats

You've probably heard this before, we're talking about "nervous" meat, or meat with nerves, to describe what is indicated by the blue arrow on the left. This is a piece of beef, and what we call a nerve is not a nerve, it is in fact collagen (chemists sometimes call it a "collagen sink"), a...
April 16^th 202142 K4.5

Drawing a pattern in pastry

Often in the kitchen, in pastry-making, or in baking, we need to trace a pattern on a pastry. It's just a question of aesthetics but it has its effect after baking on a galette, pithiviers, pâté en croute (terrine in a pie crust), etc.
May 23^th 201939 K4.1

The color of the bread crumb

When you go to buy bread, at your baker's, at the time of the choice, if you hesitate of course, you will undoubtedly be very sensitive to the color of the crust, and you will be right. The color of the crust, from golden, to sometimes very dark, deep brown almost black, depending on the maturity...
April 30^th 202224 K4.6

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 202512 K3