Roxana Jullapat’s fingers fly across a dish of pale pie dough, pinching, tucking and crimping to create a perimeter of crust that looks like a work of art. The 15-second Instagram reel is mesmerizing.
Jullapat is behind the Friends & Family bakery and cafe in Hollywood and Silver Lake. Her pastry cases are some of the most impressive in the city, brimming with croissants, muffins, cookies, hand pies, galettes, biscuits, quiches, scones, cakes and bread. And after posting a collection of “crimp of the day” videos to Instagram during the holidays, she’s become the Internet’s pie queen. Her reels of scalloped edges, artichoke-patterned crimps and lattice tops have racked up millions of views.
“Crimping was a way for me to like gain entry into this mystery world of pies, where I’ve always been a bystander,” says Jullapat. The chef grew up in Costa Rica, immune to the pie mania that grips most Americans during the holiday season. “Because I have no rules or emotional attachment like the rest of America, it’s OK to break the rules.”
She estimates that she and her staff made more than 200 pies for the Thanksgiving holiday. And she’s gearing up for more later this month.
Among her instructional videos are techniques for crimping crusts and topping pies at every skill level. A juicy cherry filling bubbles up and around overlapping circles of dough over the top of one pie. There’s the foldover crimp for beginners. In another reel, she uses kitchens shears to snip away at the dough, then tucks the strips in to create a pattern that mimics a wheat stalk.
“We make so much pie and sometimes it can seem like a chore,” she says. “To have the playful moments like these really makes it a lot lighter and more fun.”
She experiments with new crimps each year, attempting to carve a space for herself in an area of American baking that always felt unfamiliar.
“Pie is very foreign to me,” she says. “I’ve always been curious why people are very into pies even though by definition, they are kind of wrong. Half the pies we make would be better tarts than pies.”
I laughed in response, but Jullapat made some excellent points.
There is a conflict between the dough that cooks at a certain temperature and time versus what might be needed to cook the filling. Fruit is typically a finicky ingredient, with one batch of fruit varying in moisture content and sweetness from one to the next. Do you cook the fruit? Let it marinate and then thicken?
“People get annoyed when you insert a lot of like professional industry talk into pie making because we want to perceive it as something done at home with ease and magic,” says Jullapat. “Like it’s a legacy that we’ve been passing from one family to the other to make delicious pie.”
It may not be the easiest of desserts, but Jullapat has some tips for what she refers to as “hacking” pie. And she shares the recipe for her basic pie crust that was originally published in her cookbook “Mother Grains.” It’s a recipe that requires both cream cheese and butter, which gives the crust a rich buttery flavor and a texture that’s short, tender and flaky all at once. A champion of whole-grain flours, Jullapat calls for an all-purpose, whole-grain flour such as Sonora wheat but includes a variation for refined all-purpose flour in the recipe as well.
Jullapat sources her whole-grain flour from Grist and Toll flour mill in Pasadena, but notes that you can find whole grain flours at multiple retailers and online.
But when it comes to her favorite pie of all time, there’s no pie crust — or crimping — required.
“I love a Key lime pie, which is pretty common all over Latin America because condensed milk is very common there,” she says. “It’s the easiest pie.”
Jullapat will release her next cookbook, “Morning Baker: Recipes and Rituals for Breakfast and Beyond,” in the spring. And yes, the book will include more pie.
You can find Jullapat’s pie dough recipe below, along with a few other pie recipes from our L.A. Times recipe archives. Happy crimping and baking.
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Sonora Wheat Pie Dough
Roxana Jullapat’s pie dough recipe can be used for both sweet and savory pies. It was adapated from her cookbook, “Mother Grains: Recipes for the Grain Revolution.” She calls for all-purpose whole-grain flour such as Sonoran wheat, and combines both cold cream cheese and butter in the crust. If you need ideas for how to crimp your crust, head to her Instagram account.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 15 minutes plus chilling time. Makes 2 (9-inch) pie crusts or 1 double pie crust.
Spiced Pumpkin Pie
Jing Gao adds a Sichuan twist to her pumpkin pie, adding both Chinese five-spice and Sichuan pepper to the traditional nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger. The spices are just familiar enough, and extra comforting.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 55 minutes. Serves 8 to 10.
(Shelby Moore / For The Times )
Quarter Sheets’ Grapefruit Cream Pie
Pastry chef Hannah Ziskin is best known for her cakes at Quarter Sheets in Echo Park. But this grapefruit cream pie proves that she’s a master of pie as well. Ziskin uses sweet grapefruits to make a citrus curd under a whipped cream topping in a graham cracker crust.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 1 hour 30 minutes plus up to overnight chilling time. Makes 1 (9 inch) pie.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Not Too Sweet Pecan Pie
Former cooking columnist Ben Mims shares his recipe for a classic pecan pie. He cuts the sweetness in the pie with browned butter, vanilla bean and a shot of lemon juice. A final sprinkling of flaky sea salt adds a savory crunch.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 1 hour 45 minutes plus cooling. Serves 8.
(Katrina Frederick / For The Times)
Double-Crust Apple Pie
Ben Mims also shares a recipe for a classic apple pie with a double crust. Instead of pre-cooking the apples, the filling is piled into the crust and everything bakes together. It’s a straightforward, easy recipe that delivers an unforgettable apple pie.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 2 hours 30 minutes plus cooling. Serves 8.
(Katrina Frederick / For The Times)