The picture at the top of this post, alas, is not the tart I made. Mine was shaggier, humbler, and the camera elves didn’t like it until it was too late. That is to say, gone, baby, gone—it was that good. No, the near-perfect specimen above is the one that photo stylist Bill Sorrell (whose recipe this was, remember) made from his second dough ball. “The indented crust on the bottom right side is where Vinnie the cat tried to dive in for his own little helping,” he wrote when he sent it. “I had a slice this morning for breakfast—ummmmmmm!”

I’d written Bill detailing my tale of woe, and he asked me what had gone wrong. I gave him the whole ugly narrative, including one detail—that there’d been an interval where the dough sat on the counter for a bit before I’d rolled it out.

“They're a finicky thing,” he wrote back, “and I've definitely learned the hard way.” (Have I mentioned what a nice guy Bill is?) “It’s especially hard when it’s hot and humid, even in AC. The lard-based crusts tend to ‘break down’ quicker—they like to be cool and worked on a cool surface. I think it might have worked better had you gone right at it just as soon as you removed it from the fridge.”

Ah. As the next weekend rolled around, I removed the second dough ball from the freezer to the fridge for 24 hours, and I went right at it, just like Bill said, but this time on the cool glass surface of my stove. The dough still cracked, but not as much (and none of it disappeared). For the filling, I cut the sugar by nearly half, which made for a rather tart tart (why do they call them tarts, anyway?).

Yo, Bill: Call me when you hold that piecrust seminar. I’m there.