Confusing instructions re blind baking

I have never made this recipe, my go to pumpkin pie recipe is from the recently revised Joy of Cooking. Although it does say to blind bake, I never do and it comes out perfectly each time.
I always roll the crust out thinly, shield the crust edges with silicone or foil, and bake in the lower two thirds of the oven.
If you need an online recipe, Epicurious is a fabulous source!

This recipe (dated October 18, 2022) has been heavily edited. Visiting the Internet Wayback Machine, one can see that the original recipe (dated November 21, 2011) is different and does not have the confusing Test Kitchen headnote.

If you expand the comments, you can clearly see that this recipe dates back to November 2011 and has been recycled.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130218201241/https://food52.com/recipes/15143-meta-given-s-pumpkin-pie

Even earlier this year, the old recipe was intact.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220310224452/https://food52.com/recipes/15143-meta-given-s-pumpkin-pie

So this recipe was very recently edited with no acknowledgement of the changes and a contradictory Test Kitchen paragraph was thrown in to contribute to the confusion.

If this October edit is an improvement on their own original recipe, Food52 should state that plain and clear. No shame in that and it would eliminate this type of confusion.

Anyhow parbaking the crust will reduce the chance of a soggy bottom.

Best of luck.

You don't have to blind bake, BUT if you want a thorough baked bottom crust, it would be best to blind bake first. This way, the bottom will be golden & baked after the filling has been added and baked. This avoids the dreaded "soggy bottom".