Antique Stores: If you have a favorite local antique store or flea market, keep your eye out for an old-school pie bird. The traditional inverted funnels, with arches on the bottom for steam to enter, were followed by ceramic birds; and from the 1940s they have been produced in a multitude of designs. [1] Creigiau Pottery of South Wales produced a 'Welsh Pie Dragon' in copper lustreware. This trend has been particularly noticeable in recent times, due to their increasing popularity as gifts and collectors' items rather than simply utilitarian kitchen tools.

Place your bird right in the middle of the dough. Spoon your filling evenly around the bird. Step 4: Add the top layer of dough A pie bird is a tool, usually made of ceramic and shaped like a bird, that aids in venting steam from your double-crusted pie effectively preventing boil overs from juicy fillings and helping you attain a nice, crisp crust. They are also sometimes referred to as pie vents, pie chimneys, pie whistles and pie funnels. Whether bird-shaped or not, they are usually tall, narrow and always hollow (the steam flows up and out through the hollow center). Ceramic versions are classic, but they come in silicone now, too, as seen on the right in the photo below.

Pie birds aren't as common as they used to be, but it's time to bring them back.

Some of the famous china manufacturers such as Spode, Royal Worcester, Denby, Shelley and Grimwade have all produced pie funnels on a commercial basis but it was Grimwade that produced the widest variety of designs, five of which are patented or design registered. Among them are the ‘figural elephant pie funnel/ring holder’, which was produced in white and grey, to the ultimate ‘Bleriot Pie Divider’ produced in three different sizes, which separated the pie dish into two parts so that two different meats or fruits could be baked in the same pie. Each of these dividers came with their own specific patented pie dish. Follow your recipe and bake as you normally would. Don’t remove the bird, though! You can cut and serve around him.

We love our modern kitchen tools, but it turns out your grandma probably had the perfect solution for preventing this mess all along: a pie bird. What is a pie bird? Why do I need one? While the majority of pie funnels are made from pottery there is also quite a selection made from Pyrex glass, aluminium and plastic. The majority of the early examples were produced commercially by larger potteries that manufactured a wide range of white ware, but later the smaller potteries produced limited editions of real works of art. In the forefront was Stuart Bass, who has produced over 300 different designs since the mid-1970s.A pie bird is a hollow ceramic tool that bakers place in the center of pies to prevent bubbling over. They can also be called pie vents, because that hollow core allows steam to escape during baking. The pie funnel, also known as pie ventilator or pie bird, as the Americans like to call it, is a late Victorian utensil. They were designed to prevent the juices spilling onto the pastry or the floor of the oven and also to support the pie crust and stop it from sagging. Pie funnels were used to prevent pie filling from boiling up and leaking through the crust by allowing steam to escape from inside the pie. [3] They also supported the pastry crust in the center of the pie, so that it did not sag in the middle, and are occasionally known as "crustholders". Older ovens had more problems with uniform heating, and the pie bird prevented boil-over in pie cooking. https://ezinearticles.com/?Tips-on-Collecting-Pie-Funnels&id=6355043 by Marion Aston http://tialillycomsecondhand.wpsuo.com/the-intermediate-guide-to-victorian-light-pull Follow your recipe of choice to prep all the ingredients as noted. Step 2: Place bottom layer of dough