Pie is my Kryptonite
I love pie. It's pretty much my favorite dessert but mastering crust is still a work in progress. There are two major things working against me in my struggle to achieve pastry brilliance: first off, I live in a very hot and humid place with no air conditioning; that means my dough is automatically going to be stickier and harder to work with. Secondly, my Grandma was a very good pie maker. Grandma's brilliance means there are a whole lot of expectations and measures to live up to!
My Grandmother worked as a domestic for a prominent family before she got married. As such, she often cooked dishes she learned in the white household. Pie was one of these things. Her pumpkin chiffon pie at Thanksgiving was a thing of beauty; a perfectly thin and crisp crust with a light pumpkin filling topped by real whipped cream. When Grandma became ill and later passed on, I took her recipe and attempted to recreate it. Some notable failures: I misread the recipe and added twice as much nutmeg as I should have, I didn't dock the crust before blind baking it so it puffed up in several places and shattered before I filled it, I gave up and used store bought crust and my mother had soooo much to say about those years. And, in one memorable Thanksgiving, I made the perfect crust...then forgot to add the whipped egg whites to the pumpkin mixture. In rectifying that error, the entire crust slid out of the pan and into the sink. No pie that year.
Since my family prefers pie to cake, we tend to have it for birthday desserts. A lot of the time, I just buy it. But not this year! The power of the blog compels me to make an apple pie for Chris's 28th birthday!
I decided to use a crust recipe I found on the King Arthur Flour website. Here are the cast members for the crust.
It's a good basic recipe--flour and salt are whisked together in a bowl. Buttermilk powder is an optional ingredient and since I had some, I whisked that in also.
Two sticks of butter were cut into small cubes and added to the flour mixture. You can use a pastry cutter but I like to use my hand to work the butter into the flour. I have to use a light, quick touch because I have really warm hands and pastry does not like heat and it does not like a lot of handling.
This particular recipe leaves the butter in large pea-sized lumps. I started drizzling iced water in a little at a time, just to incorporate the loose flour bits.
I tipped the dough out and gently and quickly squeezed the mass to form a ball. You can see the bits of butter here and there and that's fine. They will make your pastry flaky!
The dough is divided into two balls, one slightly larger than the other, than patted into a circle before being enclosed in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for about 30 minutes. This will keep the butter cold and will allow the dough to relax.
In the meanwhile, I started on the filling which I got off the Allrecipes website. It's a very simple and basic filling that has absolutely no spices! The recipe called for 8 Granny Smiths. I thought that was a lot so I did 5.
I melted a stick of butter then added some flour to make a thin roux. Water, brown and white sugar were added and brought to a boil. I left the pan on low to simmer while I peeled, cored and sliced the apples.
Despite having been chilled, the large quantity of butter and the heat of the day meant the crust started to soften very quickly. I floured the countertop and rolling pin generously to get it going.
If you are going to work with dough, one of the best tools you can get is a bench scraper. It allows you to get under that stubborn dough so you can shift it and flip it around.
I folded the dough into fourths and laid it in the glass pie plate. I placed the pie plate on a rimmed pan to catch any spilled juices and to make it easier to take the pie plate out of the oven later on. While I rolled the top crust, I put this into the fridge to stay cold.
I filled the crust with the apple slices, making sure they were evenly distributed. Then I poured the syrup over all.
The top crust was laid on and tucked under the inner crust. I pinched them together and did a quick crimp. There were a couple of places where the top crust was a bit short so the crimp is uneven. Let's call it "rustic" looking.
I made a few cuts in the middle to let the steam out and then put a foil collar around the crust to keep it from browning too quickly. At this point, even a small task such as this was causing nervous sweat to pour down my back. The pie went in at 425 for 15 minutes, then the temperature was lowered to 350 for another 35 minutes. I removed the foil when it hit the 25 minute mark so it could brown up better.
Not bad at all! There was a bit of spillage so I'm glad the pan was there. The juice that came out was quite thin, rather than syrupy, and that made me a little concerned, too.
There was definitely not enough thickener in the filling so the bottom crust got soggy. However, the filling was delicious and I didn't miss the cinnamon or nutmeg that other recipes would have called for. In addition, the top crust was absolute perfection--see that flakiness? Yum!
The guys said the soggy bottom didn't bother them because it was a very good tasting pie and the top crust made up for it. I wouldn't mind trying this filling recipe again and maybe play with some thickening agents to see how that would work. Turtle rating of 5 for the crust and 4 for the filling! I'll keep working on it...
Here are the promised links:
King Arthur All-Butter Pie Crust
Grandma Ople's Apple Pie
Equipment recommendations:
Progressive bench scraper
In addition to scraping your dough, you can also use it to clean off your bench and pin (gently!). It also smashes garlic.
Rolling pin--I honestly don't remember where I got mine but some things I like about it are it's slim, lightweight, easy to clean and a good length. I don't like pins that have handles on the end or ball bearings that allow the pin to roll. You get more control with a simple design such as this. This one is about 18".
My Grandmother worked as a domestic for a prominent family before she got married. As such, she often cooked dishes she learned in the white household. Pie was one of these things. Her pumpkin chiffon pie at Thanksgiving was a thing of beauty; a perfectly thin and crisp crust with a light pumpkin filling topped by real whipped cream. When Grandma became ill and later passed on, I took her recipe and attempted to recreate it. Some notable failures: I misread the recipe and added twice as much nutmeg as I should have, I didn't dock the crust before blind baking it so it puffed up in several places and shattered before I filled it, I gave up and used store bought crust and my mother had soooo much to say about those years. And, in one memorable Thanksgiving, I made the perfect crust...then forgot to add the whipped egg whites to the pumpkin mixture. In rectifying that error, the entire crust slid out of the pan and into the sink. No pie that year.
Since my family prefers pie to cake, we tend to have it for birthday desserts. A lot of the time, I just buy it. But not this year! The power of the blog compels me to make an apple pie for Chris's 28th birthday!
I decided to use a crust recipe I found on the King Arthur Flour website. Here are the cast members for the crust.
It's a good basic recipe--flour and salt are whisked together in a bowl. Buttermilk powder is an optional ingredient and since I had some, I whisked that in also.
Two sticks of butter were cut into small cubes and added to the flour mixture. You can use a pastry cutter but I like to use my hand to work the butter into the flour. I have to use a light, quick touch because I have really warm hands and pastry does not like heat and it does not like a lot of handling.
This particular recipe leaves the butter in large pea-sized lumps. I started drizzling iced water in a little at a time, just to incorporate the loose flour bits.
I tipped the dough out and gently and quickly squeezed the mass to form a ball. You can see the bits of butter here and there and that's fine. They will make your pastry flaky!
The dough is divided into two balls, one slightly larger than the other, than patted into a circle before being enclosed in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for about 30 minutes. This will keep the butter cold and will allow the dough to relax.
In the meanwhile, I started on the filling which I got off the Allrecipes website. It's a very simple and basic filling that has absolutely no spices! The recipe called for 8 Granny Smiths. I thought that was a lot so I did 5.
I melted a stick of butter then added some flour to make a thin roux. Water, brown and white sugar were added and brought to a boil. I left the pan on low to simmer while I peeled, cored and sliced the apples.
Despite having been chilled, the large quantity of butter and the heat of the day meant the crust started to soften very quickly. I floured the countertop and rolling pin generously to get it going.
If you are going to work with dough, one of the best tools you can get is a bench scraper. It allows you to get under that stubborn dough so you can shift it and flip it around.
I folded the dough into fourths and laid it in the glass pie plate. I placed the pie plate on a rimmed pan to catch any spilled juices and to make it easier to take the pie plate out of the oven later on. While I rolled the top crust, I put this into the fridge to stay cold.
I filled the crust with the apple slices, making sure they were evenly distributed. Then I poured the syrup over all.
The top crust was laid on and tucked under the inner crust. I pinched them together and did a quick crimp. There were a couple of places where the top crust was a bit short so the crimp is uneven. Let's call it "rustic" looking.
I made a few cuts in the middle to let the steam out and then put a foil collar around the crust to keep it from browning too quickly. At this point, even a small task such as this was causing nervous sweat to pour down my back. The pie went in at 425 for 15 minutes, then the temperature was lowered to 350 for another 35 minutes. I removed the foil when it hit the 25 minute mark so it could brown up better.
Not bad at all! There was a bit of spillage so I'm glad the pan was there. The juice that came out was quite thin, rather than syrupy, and that made me a little concerned, too.
There was definitely not enough thickener in the filling so the bottom crust got soggy. However, the filling was delicious and I didn't miss the cinnamon or nutmeg that other recipes would have called for. In addition, the top crust was absolute perfection--see that flakiness? Yum!
The guys said the soggy bottom didn't bother them because it was a very good tasting pie and the top crust made up for it. I wouldn't mind trying this filling recipe again and maybe play with some thickening agents to see how that would work. Turtle rating of 5 for the crust and 4 for the filling! I'll keep working on it...
Happy birthday, dear Chris!
King Arthur All-Butter Pie Crust
Grandma Ople's Apple Pie
Equipment recommendations:
Progressive bench scraper
In addition to scraping your dough, you can also use it to clean off your bench and pin (gently!). It also smashes garlic.
Rolling pin--I honestly don't remember where I got mine but some things I like about it are it's slim, lightweight, easy to clean and a good length. I don't like pins that have handles on the end or ball bearings that allow the pin to roll. You get more control with a simple design such as this. This one is about 18".
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