Avoid overworking the pie dough. Similar ingredients are used in pie and tart doughs, such as flour, butter (or another oil), water, salt, and occasionally sugar.
Prepare The Filler (And The Crust). With some kind of pretreatment, a lot of pie fillings bake up successfully.
You can put more apples into a pie if you precook the apples, and custards bake more evenly when they are first prepared on the stovetop.