Handmade Karelian pies - Part 2

Once the rice porridge has been made, we can move on to making and rolling the pie dough. Here you can read how we made the rice porridge filling last time in a rice cooker.

In his excellent book, Karjalan parhaat leivonnaiset (1993) (The best pastries of Karelia), Chef Kolmonen wrote:

Karjalanpiirastaikina tehdään perinteisesti ruisjauhosta, vedestä ja suolasta. Translated: Karelian pie dough is traditionally made from rye flour, water and salt.

That is indeed what we do with our pies. Of course, wheat flour may also be used in genuine Karelian pies, in accordance with the EU name protection for 'Karelian pie' mentioned in the previous article, but we do not believe that wheat flour improves the taste and texture of Karelian pies. Personally, we sometimes compare the Karelian pie to the blueberry rooster (mustikkakukko) or sourdough rye bread: the end result is best when the dough is 100% rye. The purpose of wheat flour is to facilitate the baking process by making the dough less sticky and more elastic, and making the handling of Karelian pie dough easier in all respects, including on the rolling of the dough. Hilkka Uusivirta's book Suomalaisen ruokaperinteen keittokirja (1993) (translated: Finnish food tradition) on page 196 says the following about Karelian pies:

Huom. Ellet ole tottunut leipoja, korvaa osa ruisjauhoista vehnäjauhoilla. Translated: Note. If you are not an experienced baker, replace some of the rye flour with wheat flour.

When we talk about the Karelian pie dough and its handling, what matters is not the ratio of rye and wheat flour used (e.g. 85/15) but what type of rye flour is used. There are two main types: fine and rough. We make the dough from quite fine rye flour. However, for the handling and processing, we use a mix of both coarse and fine rye flour.

Next, we will go through the preparation and processing of dough for about 25-30 Karelian pies. The porridge made in the previous article is enough for this amount.

Dough ingredients:

5-6 dl fine rye flour

2 dl cold water

1 tsp salt

Method:

• Mix the salt and flour with cold water and knead the dough. This is best done by hand, especially if food-grade plastic gloves are available. You can also use a traditional pie rolling pin (piiroopuilikka) or a wooden spatula for mixing.

• Make a couple of thin cylinders of the dough and cut them into 25-30 even-sized pieces.

Fig 1. Cut pieces from dough cylinders.

• Shape / pat the pieces into rounder balls and then into flatter discs. Smooth balls / discs produce pie shells with smooth edges. It is advisable to cover the dough discs before rolling to prevent them from drying out.

Fig 2. Shape and smile.

• Dig up a piiroopuilikka or a conventional rolling pin and roll the dough discs into such thin, round shells that light can pass through them properly, or as stated Uusivirta's book:

Karjalaisen piirakankuoren piti olla niin ohut, että sen läpi näkyi seitsemän kirkkoa. Translated: The Karelian pie crust had to be so thin that seven churches could be seen through it.

Fig 3. Rolling. Little finger extension is optional.

Fig 4. Finished translucent Karelian pie crust.

• From the two videos below, you can adopt our technique for rolling the pie shells. A fairly coarse flour mixture is used to prevent the shells from sticking. As you gain experience, the pie shell does not have to be turned by hand, but rotates by itself under the rolling pin, as demonstrated below by Raka; many Indian breads (roti or chapati) are rolled in the same way.

• When stacking the rolled pie crusts on top of each other, it is a good idea to dust them with both coarse and a little fine rye flour so that the crusts do not stick to each other before they are filled and crinkled.

Let's finish with a couple of notes:

1. The dough can also be made with a dough machine, but if the flour is 100% rye, then the machine may have problems kneading the dough. It may happen that the machine moves more than the dough. At our bakery, we put 5 kg of rye flour in one batch of dough and we use a slightly heavier all-purpose machine that weighs as much as a baker.

2. Various pasta machines suitable for home use are convenient for rolling pie crusts. The EU name protection document does not comment on the tools used in the baking of Karelian pies. We also emailed the Food Authorities (Ruokavirasto) about this matter and their position was (translation from Finnish): "There is no mention in the [name protection papers] that all the work steps should be done by hand, so you can choose the tools and equipments yourself".

3. It is not necessary to form the dough into cylinders from which pieces are cut. Instead, you can roll the dough into a thick sheet, from which it is easy to cut suitable discs using a cookie cutter or the end of a water glass. However, this process requires a couple of iterations, i.e., the excesses of the cut plate have to be rolled a couple of times for the whole dough to be used.

Figure 5. The faithful all-purpose dough machine at our bakery.

Next time we will fill the pie shells with rice porridge and crinkle and bake beautiful Karelian pies.