I’m using the all buttah pie crust recipe and attempting to par- bake them. I keep getting pools of melted butter, is that supposed to happen?

I’m having the same issue. Made the dough based on the flakey instructions with walnut sizes pieces of butter. Was so meticulous in following each detail and when I took the pie weights out there was a ton of butter under the parchment. Will be trying again with the smaller butter chunks but would love to know why this happened. My dough was well-chilled and oven is at 425.

I just came here to see why I have so much melted butter & a big smoky mess, but it seems most of us are in the same messy boat. Anyone find a fix? Butter chunks too big at walnut-half size?

I have the same problem - lots of butter running up over the rim of the pie plate during the parbake, dripping onto the bottom of the oven. From the comments and discussions here on Food52, it sounds like this is a *VERY* common issue.

One idea I had is that using European-style (lower water) butter makes more of a difference than Ms McDowell quite explains. I'd really like to see a discussion of how to deal with this when using typical American butter.

What a mess. I followed Erin's All Buttah pie crust recipe to a tee. Weighed everything. The crust was easy to roll out just like she showed but I had smoke billowing out of the oven and an oven fire because there was butter running off the pizza stone onto the bottom of the oven. After I cleaned that up and took out the weights to brown the bottom all I had was pools of bubbling butter in the pie pan. What a disappointing Thanksgiving because of my soggy butter crust pumpkin pies. Never again.

I’m having a similar issue when baking fruit pies. I’m mixing for a flaky crust so there are larger chunks of butter per the recipe, but this winds up being a melting, bubbling mess between the crust and the glass dish. I rested the pie in the fridge for an hour before baking, baked at 425 for 50 minutes, and used a pizza stone. I only pulled the pie out of the fridge to apply the egg wash, then straight to the oven. Not sure where I’m going wrong!

I'm having the same problem and think it's because I didn't mix the butter into the flour quite enough to achieve the smaller pea size butter lumps.

SMALL amounts of visible butter are going to melt out visibly, but it shouldn't be what I, at any rate, would describe as a pool. Butter is going to melt before anything else happens, one of the reason a lot of people favor using part Crisco in their crusts. You people must have smaller walnuts than I'm familiar with- a Filbert size piece of butter would be huge in a crust. As I recall that recipe called for rubbing the butter in without cutting it, which does take some patience.

Was the pooled butter still standing as the pie crust cooled? I've had this happen when I've tried Stella Parks' pie crust, it's not ideal but the butter did kind of re-absorb one time, and the crust was ok - a little tough by not terrible by any means.

Hi Kayla—what temperature were you par-baking? I believe Erin likes to bake her crusts nice and hot (like 425F) which helps the moisture in the butter steam and poof the layers before the fat has a chance to melt out. Anything that might get in the way of that (a lower temp, an oven that secretly runs cooler, a thick, heavy stoneware or ceramic pie pan, or a not-totally-cold dough) could cause the butter to melt and escape before it steams. A little melty butter isn't a big deal (yum!) as long as you get some nice flakiness and browning, but if it looks really melty and greasy, you could consider re-branding your pie with some of the ideas in the pie section here: https://food52.com/blog/14918-we-ve-got-99-thanksgiving-problems-and-solutions-to-every-one