The Pie Crust Hack That Removes The Risk Of A Soggy Bottom

Making fruit pies can be tricky, as any baker knows. Fruit isn't always in season, and if you're using frozen fruit instead of fresh, adding a thickener, like cornstarch, arrowroot starch, or tapioca flour is important to prevent a watery pie. Getting the crust right also takes a little practice. Using chilled butter and cold water will help create a flaky crust, but using an easy hand when mixing the dough and chilling it before putting it in the oven is also necessary if you want to avoid a hard or mushy pie crust. But sometimes, you do everything right, and you still end up with a soft and wet pie bottom.

An Instagrammer discovered a pie crust hack to absorb extra liquid from your fruit filling and prevent the bottom of your crust from getting soggy: oats. According to @answerswithanna, sprinkling two tablespoons of oats on the bottom of the pie before adding the fruit filling will prevent you from encountering that dreaded soft and spongy pie bottom.

"Yay! No more soggy apple pie!" responded one excited person in the comments. "I did not know this! Thank you!" said another. Meanwhile, many respondents pointed out their own solutions to avoid a soggy pie bottom.

Despite some of the Instagram comments claiming they had already tried this method and you couldn't taste any oats with the end result, there were still plenty of people hesitant about how this addition would affect their pie. "Yeah...but then you have oats in your pie," one person pointed out. "We have always used instant tapioca. It works great without changing the flavor or texture. Just helps with excess moisture." responded another.

While oats on the bottom crust of your pie will definitely help prevent it from getting soggy, there are other options that may work just as well, such as the tapioca that the other commenter mentioned. Cornstarch can be a good option, while others suggested bread crumbs, cream cheese, and even cookie crumbles.

As it turns out, two of the most tried and true options for preventing a soggy pie bottom don't involve oats or any kind of thickener. The first is to blind-bake the crust either fully or partially, which means baking the crust before adding the filling. Just remember to add pie weights (or even dried beans) so your dough doesn't shrink in the oven. The alternative option is to brush the pie crust with an egg white wash. The egg's proteins form a barrier between the crust and filling, which lessens the chance that liquid from the fruit you're using will make your pie's bottom mushy.