Making chicken pot pie this weekend was the direct result of my time in Dough!, a four-hour-long cooking class offered at Orange Coast College. It’s not that I needed to drive 60 miles to find a reasonably priced cooking class or even that I was particularly interested in learning to make puff pastry.

I was drawn to the class because the course syllabus said we would “make flaky pies.” Now pecan pie is my vice, I want to make every recipe in The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book, and competition at the annual Thanksgiving pie bake-off is getting intense. Just like the wrong shoes can ruin the best outfit, a pie is only as good as its crust. I was looking for a competitive advantage with Dough!

You can imagine my reaction when I realized I’d fallen for the old bait and switch. While we learned to make bread, using just flour, water and a little bit of salt, and watched our instructor prepare puff pastry, rolling out the dough, folding it into thirds, rotating it to the left, and repeating three times, we didn’t even talk about pie crust.

But you could say it wasn’t a total loss as this chicken pot pie was really good. The recipe below is adapted from the Hay Day Country Market Cookbook, one of my absolute favorites, with leftover rotisserie chicken. I used a 9-by-7-inch oval baking dish for this one, the original recipe used 8 individual ramekins, but anything of a comparable volume will work fine.

Chicken Pie with a Puff Pastry Lid
Serves 6

2 pounds chicken (Breast, thighs, pan-fried, roasted – whatever you’ve got on hand will do; remove the skin before baking as the skin will lose any crunch if baked into the pie.)
3 cups chicken stock
2 bay leaves
15 bite-sized pearl onions, trimmed and peeled
3 carrots, cut into 1/4-inch-think rounds
1/3 pound button mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
2 ribs celery, cut into 1/4-inch-thick slices
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick butter) unsalted butter
1/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon rubbed (dried) sage
3 tablespoons red wine (The recipe calls for sherry, but I am still very unclear on where you find sherry at the liquor store.)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 recipe puff pastry (Recipe to follow; Hay Day suggests using 1 package frozen puff pastry sheets – 17 1/4 ounces, 2 sheets – thawed.)
1 egg

1. Simmer stock in a medium-sized saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the pearl onions and poach for 5 minutes. Then add the carrots, mushrooms, and celery, and continue to simmer gently until the carrots and celery are bright and tender, about 5 minutes more. Strain the contents of the saucepan into a bowl through a fine-mesh sieve. Set the vegetables aside.

2. Shred chicken into bite-size pieces.

3. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and cook until the flour is very lightly browned, 2 to 3 minutes. Add 2 cups of the strained stock and the 1 1/2 cups milk in a steady, even stream, whisking constantly until smooth. Bring to a gently simmer, add the sage, and continue to simmer until the sauce is slightly thickened, about 1 minute. Then add the wine, and stir in the chicken and vegetables. Season to taste with salt and pepper. (The filling can be prepared to this point a day or two in advance and refrigerate, covered, until serving time.)

4. Preheat the oven to 400°F.

5. Roll out puff pastry on a lightly floured surface and invert baking dish to trace outline of crust topping. Mix the egg with 1 tablespoon of milk that remains to use as a wash for the pastry.

6. Flip baking dish back over and spoon in filling. Place puff pastry on top of filling and pick with the tines of a fork and brush with egg wash. Bake until the pastry is nicely browned and puffed and the filling is piping hot, 20 – 25 minutes.

Quick Puff Pastry

18 tablespoons (2 sticks and 2 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cake flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup ice water

Cut butter in 1/2-inch cubes. Refrigerate butter for at least 30 minutes or freeze it for 10 minutes.

In a large mixing bowl, place both flours and salt and mix to combine. Add the cold butter and rub butter between fingers until large flakes, about 1 inch in size, form. Add the water, and continue mixing with hands until dough roughly masses together; the butter pieces should remain the same size. If the dough does not come together, add more ice water by the teaspoon.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and, with your hands, quickly push and pat it into a rectangle about 10 inches by 8 inches. Lightly flour the surface of the dough. Using a sharp edge – like a dough scraper – to flip over the dough, fold it into thirds as you would a business letter. Rotate 90 degrees to the right, and repeat the process. Lightly flour dough. Push and pat to a rectangle about 10 inches by 8 inches. Flip dough and fold into thirds. Repeat this process twice more. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate it for a minimum of 40 minutes and a maximum of 1 day.