Arizona Pastry Chef Tracy Dempsey Shares Pie-Making Advice Ahead of Thanksgiving

With Thanksgiving approaching, longtime Arizona pastry chef Tracy Dempsey is deep into the busiest baking season of her year. Dempsey spent much of her career at Cowboy Ciao in Old Town Scottsdale and now leads Tracy Dempsey Originals, which takes a heavy load of Thanksgiving pie orders at this time of year.

She visited KJZZ's studios recently to talk with host Lauren Gilger about pie, the holiday table and her own plans. Her family's approach to the day has changed over the years. After many traditional Thanksgivings, Dempsey and her husband began breaking with convention, making enchiladas and tamales one year and, she thinks, smoking a brisket another. They no longer have family nearby, she said, and now treat the holiday as a chance to experiment. A smoked turkey from a local shop one year was, in her words, "so good."

Her fondest holiday memories come from her grandparents' farm in Arkansas, where the meal was thoroughly traditional. It included sliced canned cranberry sauce and a cranberry, cream cheese and sour cream salad that she still loves, even though her husband does not. She described it as very '70s.

Pie has long been part of her family's dessert table. She recalled watching her grandmother and mother bake, and said her father makes mincemeat pie. For her own table this year she is leaning away from pumpkin, the pie she grew up with, in favor of options such as chocolate bourbon pecan, butternut squash and lemon chess. She still likes pumpkin, she said, but added that life is short and a person should eat every kind of pie they can find.

The chocolate bourbon pecan pie is one of her favorites. She said a traditional pecan pie can be overly sweet, so she adds bittersweet chocolate and bourbon to take the edge off. She called the crust the make-or-break element of any pie, and hers is made entirely with butter.

Producing pies at her scale comes down to planning, Dempsey said, and the same applies to home cooks, for whom the holiday can be stressful. She grates large quantities of chilled butter and keeps it in the freezer, then portions it into her large mixer to make dough discs that she wraps and refrigerates or freezes. Fillings are made ahead, so that on baking day the crusts are already rolled out and frozen. She bakes them from frozen and partially bakes them with parchment paper and pie weights until they are nearly done. A well-baked crust matters, she said, because the filling acts as an insulator.

For home bakers who struggle with crust, her main advice is temperature control. She freezes her butter and keeps her flour chilled, noting that kitchens can run warm. Her dough also includes a small pinch of baking powder, a hint of sugar, salt and ice-cold water with a little vinegar. Salt is important, she said, because it stands out against a sweet filling.

She also cautioned against overworking the dough or adding too much water. Dempsey suggested adding some water, stepping away briefly and returning, so the flour can hydrate and absorb it. Too much water, she said, leaves a tough crust. Even so, she believes people can overthink the process and become afraid of it.

Though she keeps the core pies familiar each year, Dempsey likes to add small twists. She has offered butternut squash or sweet potato versions in place of pumpkin, and last year she made a chai-spiced pumpkin pie. She said she has also turned to apple galettes instead of double-crust apple pies, partly because she can be a little lazy about the extra crust, and a streusel topping can finish them.