Ron Silver & Liz Clarke

This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with Ron Silver and Liz Clarke of Bubby’s in New York—two seasoned pie‑makers sharing the love, technique, and legacy behind their famous slices. From why the harvest of apples and pumpkins gave rise to the American fruit pie, to the very technical details of dough temperature, cutting butter to the right size, and letting the crust rest properly, they walk us through Bubby’s Five Rules for How to Bake Pie at Home. Whether you’re a complete beginner or a pro pie maker, you’ll walk away from the episode with actionable tips that actually make a difference. If you’re ready to level up your holiday baking game, their cookbook Homemade Pies is the perfect companion.

I’ve always believed that baking is part science, part story, especially when it’s something as comforting as homemade pie. What I love about this episode is how Ron and Liz blend both so seamlessly, the precision of insider knowledge, with the warmth of tradition. As someone trying to bake more intentionally (and maybe a little less messily), hearing these masters break it down with clarity and passion is pure gold.

If you know me, you know I love my turkey necks, a long-standing family tradition that we observe when celebrating Thanksgiving. For everyone who’s ever asked, here is my Mom’s recipe. You can make them any time you want, just make sure you make enough.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. To kick off the holiday season, I’m sitting down with Ron Silver, the chef and owner of Bubby’s in New York City, and Bubby’s executive chef, Liz Clarke.

Today, we’re chatting everything pie as they share Bubby’s five rules for how to bake pie at home. They talk about how temperature is the key to everything, how shaping your dough will lead to a less leaky slice, and how resting your pie at the right time will create the perfect slice every time. It’s a great mini masterclass for anyone who’s ever wanted to start baking at home—and some real insider tips for anyone who considers themselves a professional baker.

So let’s get into the rules.

Ron and Liz, so nice to meet you. The holiday season is upon us, and I couldn’t think of two better people to kick it off with than you two.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having us.

Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa—everything’s coming up. The holiday season. Why does this time of year and pies work so well together?

That is a deep, deep question, really. America really invented pie—the pie as we know it, like fruit pies. Before that, the Romans would have some sort of cooked meat wrapped in dough. And then the English developed these meat pies. But before America was really rolling, they didn’t have these fruit pies the way that we have them. A lot of that is because of the abundance of American agriculture and orchards. And this is harvest season for pumpkins and apples. Once you start harvesting, you’ve got to find something to do with them.

Longtime fan of Bubby’s. And it was fun to learn that you started it as a pop-up for Thanksgiving with pies 35 years ago. What inspired you to start the restaurant there?

What inspired me is my status of being unemployable. It’s always a good place to start. I’m an artist and… my choices were really to either start a restaurant—because that was my skill as a chef—or just because I really had developed a not-the-best attitude working with other chefs in the food of the eighties. I suppose that my attitude towards that food made it impossible for me to cook it. So I was either going to be a dishwasher or my own chef. That’s really how this—“pop-up” is generous—how Bubby’s got started, because we just opened up with no permission whatsoever.

What a good time to be doing restaurants in New York. A lot less red tape during that time. I feel like New York City was really grateful to just have people trying to give it a go. Especially in that part of town.

It really was quiet. There weren’t even traffic lights down here and it was kind of a no man’s land in a way. Although there were a lot of celebrities living down here because of the large loft spaces. They were really off the beaten path, you’d say.

You guys literally wrote the book on homemade pies, which is for anyone who wants to start baking any time of the year—but especially for the holiday season—is a great tome to have in your kitchen. Why should people learn how to cook pies at home?

It’s really a beautiful thing to do where you offset yourself and be relaxed and enjoy the steps to do it. There’s a connection of home and your family with pie. It’s not rushed. You take the steps to do it, and it comes out really well. So it’s sort of also an all-encompassing warmth in the house, because there’s nothing more all-encompassing than a baking pie coming out of the oven and getting ready to cut and all of that stuff. It’s an experience.

There’s something about the phrase of a loved one saying, “I’m going to bake a pie,” especially for the holidays, that really warms the soul—which is why I’m excited for you to be sharing your five rules for how to bake a pie at home. I love the way you organize this because this really is a great chronological order of how to best prepare yourself and get ready if you’re either a well-seasoned pie maker or attempting it for the first time.

What’s your rule number one?

The number one rule that we have written down is always preheat your oven and make sure that your oven is really hot. But I think all the temperatures matter, and it’s good to be preparing dough in the coolest possible place in the house.

Which leads us into rule number two: keeping the fat that you’re going to make the pastry with—and your hands—cool.

The reality is, you usually will make your dough before you have to turn on the oven. We make the dough, keep everything as cool as possible, you put it into the refrigerator just to let the dough rest a little bit, and then you can preheat your oven before you bake. You really want to make sure it’s super hot.

A lot of the times when people are working that dough, there is a bit of a mystery of how much to form it, how much to work it. And your rule number three talks about the right amount of work that goes into making the perfect dough.

One of the things is really to cut the butter in small enough pieces and the fat—we use lard and butter. Having pieces that are pea-sized, that allows you to start working that fat into the dough quickly. And then adding the ice water, you really want to just scoop it together. Lift it and bind it, but not manhandle it. Go lightly and it will form itself into a ball. As you’re lifting up, you can feel the water, because it’s a very small amount of water moistening the flour. And then you just push it together into a ball as lightly as possible.

That really creates space between the very simple ingredients, which is fat and water, and it allows for the steam pockets to form when it’s baking—and that’s what makes a flaky crust.

Once you have that perfectly made dough, shaping it is the next point of artistry, which is a big part of your rule number four.

Rule number four is to crimp and trim carefully. After you’ve formed a dough ball and rolled it out to less than an eighth of an inch, you never want to be pushing this dough around in any kind of rough way. You lay the bottom crust into the pan and then pour the filling in. And with the filling, we also don’t push that down. Everything is very much just sort of laid in there, because that allows for a crust surface that we find to be nice.

The most important thing in this rule four is trimming the dough around the pie dish and then rolling it and crimping it properly. Otherwise, you get a lot of juice leaking out into the pan as opposed to staying in the pie.

We’ve all experienced leaky pies, which can ruin all of the effort and all of the work that you put into rolling the dough and shaping it correctly.

Your fifth and final rule deals again with temperature both before and after the bake. The after I knew, the before is new to me. What is your fifth and final rule?

The fifth and final rule is cool your pie before you bake it and make sure you allow it to cool down properly after you’ve baked it. Before you’ve baked it is after you roll out the dough and crimp it, you want to give it a half hour to rest in the refrigerator so that the gluten has a chance to relax to make the flakiest possible crust.

Just to get back to rule four, when you’re rolling and crimping, you want to make sure that it’s not overly thick. When you bake that, you end up with a raw part in the middle.

And the other thing that I just want to say to go back to rule number one—the very hot part of the oven and the bake is only the first 10 or 11 minutes. The goal is to set that crust with a high temperature so that you basically started to bake the crust first, and then you turn the oven down—from say 425 to 350. You’re baking two things at the same time: you start the crust first, and then you focus on the filling next.

Most people probably just leave it at one temp the whole time and let it ride.

That’s a mistake, I would say.

And then the final part before you slice and the presentation—it’s like anything that’s coming out of the oven, patience is key. How long would you recommend letting it wait before you slice and serve?

Four hours. If I can hold my wrist on it—I have lots of children, so I’ve squirted a lot of milk onto my wrist—you want it to be a little bit cooler than body temperature to be able to hold the form of the fruit. Pumpkin pie really needs to set for about four hours before it’s ready to cut.

I know you’re going to be busy for the holiday season serving up a ton of pies, and I appreciate you taking the time to tell the people at home the best tips and rules of how to bake pies for themselves. If people want to get the book, order pies from you, swing into the restaurant—where can they go?

Bubbys.com. Come to our website. That’s the place to buy it.

Have a great holiday season, and I hope to see you soon the next time I’m in New York.

Thank you so much for having us on, and let us know when you’re in town.

Yeah, we’ll share a slice together.

That sounds great.

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