My hunch, if it was central VA and a BBQ place, was that it wasn't a pate sucree or something similar. It was probably an "American" pie crust. You can make a great flaky crust in about four minutes with butter, flour, and a little ice cold water. Can add a pinch of salt if you want. Leave some pretty large chunks of butter and make sure you do the fraisage. Like always, let it sit for an hour or so or even a day before rolling it out. Most likely based on cost and region, they probably used shortening, but don't. It tastes bad and makes your crust have a bad mouthfeel. Just use butter. Bake it well, maybe weighing it down, and make sure you bake it very close to the time you are going to use it. In other words, don't bake it today for use tomorrow or the next day. It's never as crisp as it is the first day. Let it cool, fill and serve immediately. The water from the filling will start to soften it right away, so you don't want to let that sit if you want to maintain the crispiness. This post was edited by rosesinny on Mon, Feb 18, 13 at 17:57

Well, I'm too late, but I also blind bake with parchment paper as a liner and beans as pie weights I bake mine at 425F for 25-30 minutes, or until nicely golden brown. I mostly tell by appearance, but 25-30 minutes gives me a crust that can take a second baking if that's necessary. Sometimes I remove the pie weights and finish baking for a longer time if it's a cream pie or something that will require no additional time in the oven after filling. Annie

I do freeze most pies unbaked, but I'm thinking of fruit pies. For pecan, as mentioned, I would bake first and the same for pumpkin. I wouldn't even attempt to freeze coconut cream. The one risk with a pre-baked and frozen pumpkin is that, depending upon the recipe and how thoroughly the custard filling was baked, it might tend to weep upon thawing, softening the pastry. You might consider coating the pastry with egg white or a similar "sealer" to reduce the problem. Or, if you like the flavor, you might sprinkle the crust with crushed gingersnaps (not too many) to absorb any liquid. I would do a dry-run for my pumpkin recipe of choice and see how it handles freezing and thawing. I have had good luck flash-freezing, wrapping and stacking pie shells and then baking and filling the day of. For pumpkin custard, about 30 minutes of room-temperature thawing then filling and baking as per usual seems to work well. A pastry shell would hold its shape much better and be flakier if it were frozen and then baked. I did test that with a banana cream pie, warming the crust 30 minutes then pre-baking. For the pre-baking I did fill a roasting bag with pie weights and use that for part of the time. Then I removed it and allowed the crust to finish in the oven. This works perfectly for a "southern-style" crust where the "shrinking violet" syndrome seems always a risk. I have the temps and times if you'd like them. Carol

Joann, I almost had that same problem today. I was in Krogers yesterday and they had canned pumpkin. Great! I wanted to bake a pumpkin pie. They only had large cans of pumpkin. I haven't made pie crust for ages, so I bought frozen crusts. I was ready to start the pies...yep, I had gotten the "regular," not deep dish crusts. So no pies. I have already made Taco Soup and Broccoli Cornbread today, so I'm quitting for now. Tonight I'm going to set out everything I need for Apple Pecan Cobbler so in the morning all I will need to do is slice the apples, put it all together and bake it. That I'm taking to dinner at DGD's. Sorry about the mess you have to clean up. Sue