The Best Pie Weights For Par-Baking Pie Crusts

What to Look for in Pie Weights

Material

Like any other baking tool, pie weights need to be made of a heat-resistant material that can withstand the temperature at which you’re par-baking your pie crust. For this reason, popular materials for pie weights include ceramic, metal, and glass. These materials should maintain their integrity bake after bake and not break down or melt.

Of course, each has its own pros and cons. Ceramic beads will absorb heat slowly and parbake the crust evenly. Metal weights will heat up fast so you’ll need to monitor the crust, and will be very hot to the touch afterward. Like ceramic, glass beads will be poor heat conductors, and you’ll need to let them cool before washing, just to be safe from thermal shock.

Quantity

Simply using pie weights isn’t enough to ensure your crust won’t shrink or bubble up. You need to use a sufficient amount to weigh down the bottom of the crust and hold the sides in place. “Most pie weights are sold in small quantities of a pound or less, which is not enough to successfully pre-bake even a single pie shell,” says Kierin Baldwin, chef instructor of pastry and baking arts at the Institute of Culinary Education. "There should be enough of them to just about fill it, since the weights need to hold the sides of the shell up in addition to holding bubbles in the bottom down.” In short, more is more.

Ease of Use

A pie chain or single piece pie weight are the easiest types to use as they don’t require cutting a piece of parchment paper, pouring in weights, and transferring them back into their storage container, but they may not provide a sufficient amount of weight to keep your crust from bubbling. For pie weights that come in many small pieces, look for a storage container with a wide mouth for an easier transfer after using them.

FAQs

How do you use pie weights?

For pie crusts that need to be prebaked before the filling is added in, line the chilled pie shell with a large coffee filter or piece of parchment paper (not foil, since it isn’t porous and won’t let excess steam escape), then pour enough pie weights in to cover the bottom completely and come up the sides high enough to hold them in place.

Once the pie weights are in, put the crust in the oven and bake until the bottom of the crust isn’t soft when pressed and no longer looks wet. “You can carefully pull up the parchment on one side to check for doneness without removing all the weights,” Baldwin says. Remove the weights by lifting the parchment paper up, using it as a hammock, then pour them back into their storage container. If your filling needs to be baked, pour it into the pie crust, then bake the pie until the filling sets. If you aren’t cooking the filling, put the unfilled pie crust back into the oven and bake until the bottom of the shell is a light brown.

Is pre-baking necessary?

Baldwin says that pre-baking is typically only necessary if the pie or tart filling is baked at a lower temperature and for a shorter amount of time than a crust would normally would be (like pumpkin pie), or the filling is not baked at all (like cream pies). “Since there is no filling in the pie crust while it’s being pre-baked, you need to put something inside the shell during baking to prevent excessive bubbling and to help it keep its shape,” she says. 

What are some alternatives to pie weights?

If you don’t have pie weights, there are plenty of affordable alternatives that you might already have in your kitchen. Baldwin is partial to dried beans, but notes that their skins start to flake off after they’ve been baked a bunch of times. “At that point, you can just buy a new bag of dried beans and replace them,” she says. Rice is another popular alternative, but since they’re smaller than beans they have a tendency to scatter everywhere if you aren’t careful. Granulated sugar is another option, popularized by Stella Parks of BraveTart. “It works well and you can actually reuse the sugar afterwards,” Baldwin says.

What happens if you don’t use pie weights?

Not using pie weights isn’t the end of the world. If you forget to use them when blind baking or don’t have anything on hand to weigh down your pie crust, you’ll likely end up with a pie shell that has large bubbles at the bottom and sides that have shrunk down. Your pie might not look as pretty, but it will still taste delicious.

Do you wash pie weights?

Since you’re generally putting a piece of parchment paper or a coffee filter between the crust and the pie weights, you shouldn’t need to wash them. The exception to this is the single-piece pie weight in this roundup, which goes directly on top of the raw pie crust and is conveniently dishwasher-safe. 

“I use dried beans for baking my pie shells at home and have been using the same ones for years without issue,” Baldwin says. “A small amount of grease may get on the weights but not enough to worry about or affect their function in any way.”

Can you put pie weights directly on dough?

It isn’t recommended. “I never would,” Baldwin says. “It makes them much harder to get out, which will slow down the process of making your pie since you’ll have to let the weights cool until they are safe to handle before taking them out of the shell.” She adds that without a parchment paper or coffee filter barrier, the weights will get covered in grease from the pie crust (and leave them sticky and smelly), and you run a greater risk of damaging the crust.

How do you keep pie crust from shrinking?

In addition to using a sufficient amount of pie weights, there are a few things you can do to prevent the crust from shrinking. Minimize gluten development by using ice-cold ingredients, not overhydrating or overhandling the dough, and giving your pie dough at least 30 minutes to chill in the refrigerator after mixing it and another 30 minutes after rolling and shaping. 

“This gives any gluten that you’ve activated in the process of mixing and rolling a chance to relax, so it won’t snap back once the dough softens in the oven,” Baldwin says. Popping it into the freezer for a few minutes won’t yield the same effect. “It takes both time and low temperature to give the gluten a chance to relax, so freezing it for less time will not give you the same effect as 30 minutes in the fridge,” she says.

When prebaking your pie crust, make sure you press the parchment paper or coffee filter into the shell, and then fill it generously with your pie weights. “The weights need to cover both the bottom and the sides of the shell in order to hold it in place,” Baldwin says. “I basically fill the entire shell, which is a lot. The weights are there both to prevent big bubbles from forming in the bottom and to hold up the sides while it bakes until they have set enough to hold themselves up.”

Why Trust The Spruce Eats?

Abigail Abesamis Demarest is a freelance journalist who specializes in food and drink content. She’s interviewed a professional chef to learn about pie weights and baking basics and share this knowledge with readers. Baking and watching The Great British Baking Show are some of her favorite ways to unwind.

Sources

Melissa Elsen is the owner and founder of Four & Twenty Blackbirds in Brooklyn, New York.

Kierin Baldwin is a chef instructor of pastry and baking arts at the Institute of Culinary Education.