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Pies, pies, and PIEs

Posted by Tom on the 12th of January, 2012, at 9:32 am.

Ok, time for serious talk.

Recent simulations (1)(2) have suggested the desirability of creating a pie-of-pies, in which one large pie ("PIE") is filled with several smaller pies ("pie"). How would one plan the optimal cooking of such a PIE? I suppose you would you need to know the thermal conductivity of both the dough and the filling, and whether that conductivity changes with water content and other measures of doneness. You'd also need target metrics for that doneness.

But there are other, more puzzling problems. Does the number of pies influence their average doneness? That is, could the whole PIE be modeled as a single PIE and a single pie? This might necessitate the creation of dubious quantities, such as "distance from pie outer surface to PIE inner surface, averaged across all pies". But this supposition ignores the possibility that pies near the edge of the PIE might be cooked more thoroughly than pies near the center.

Also, how much of the cooking of the outer crust of the PIE is due to radiative heat transfer from oven heating elements, and how much is convective? If radiative transfer is significant, does that change the doneness profile from outer surface of the PIE's crust to its inner (filling-facing) surface? With this in mind, will the mini pies be adversely affected by their cooking solely through conduction from the outside of the PIE? It's possible that the more-even heating that might result from this conductive method might actually be undesirable, since the PIE, the proper temperature profile of which has been more thoroughly studied, undergoes a more sharp temperature transition from outer surface to core.

Baking is science for hungry people, and it's a science in which I might be more likely to do experimental work than simulation.