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May. 22nd, 2010 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI make very, very good apple pie. My mother made very, very good apple pie, won prizes for it at the fair. I don't eat bought-pie because that's paying good money for craptacular pie when I can do better myself. Now, I take my pie way, way too seriously. I'm also pedantic, wordy, and a big fan of Winesap apples. However, much of my advice, once you wade through the pedantic part, will probably be of some use to you, even if you insist on using nonstandard apples. All other fruit pies are modifications of apple, and the modifications are at the very bottom of this document.
Making good pie is like being able to play the piano. It takes some practice. If you try to make pie three or four times, have three or four less-than-perfect pies, and then quit because it's "too difficult", that's like sitting down at a piano three or four times in your life and being disappointed that you can't play Chopin's Concerto No. 2 in F minor like a pro. D'oh.
The ingredient missing from most pie crust recipes is practice. Learning to make very good pie will probably take you around twenty not-so-perfect pies, the vast bulk of which will be edible. You will learn most effectively if you can make at least one pie per week.
Here's how I make apple pie (read entire set of directions and commentary first before attempting to make pie):
Preheat oven to 350.
For 1 crust (you need two, a top and a bottom, so you will be making this twice):
1.5 cups white flour (I use Gold Medal all purpose. Have never tried the 'for baking' kind.)
.5 cupCrisco unflavored shortening (Not lard. Not butter. Not, heaven forfend, 'butter-flavor' Crisco. Plain regular solid white Crisco. No, I don't want to hear about trans-fats.) They changed the Crisco since I wrote this. These days I use lard, half a cup of lard per crust, which is the best option available since they "improved" Crisco and lied about how it was just like the old Crisco. NEW CRISCO IS NOT "JUST LIKE" OLD CRISCO. NEW CRISCO IS ENTIRELY UNSUITED FOR PIES. Stupid company. (Old Crisco was made entirely of TransFats, practically killed on contact. Made lovely pie crusts, though.)
half a teaspoon salt
Mash all the above together in a good-sized bowl using a fork or a pastry blender. Mash together well. You want something that looks rather like cornmeal and is all evenly mixed.
Add 3-4 Tablespoons ICE COLD WATER.
The cool water from your tap is not good enough. Please run a glass of water, add ice, and let it sit for ten minutes, then measure from that. Do NOT just use cool water from the tap. It makes a difference. I'm not kidding.
Start with the low end of the water and stir. Dough should just hold together in two or three big lumps when you've added the water. Stir it fifteen, twenty strokes in a 'round and round' pattern with a fork before deciding if it 'holds together' or not -- it holds together better with some stirring, so your initial assessment might be off.
If you add too much water, the dough will be too sticky. If you add too little water, the dough will be too fragile and won't hold together. This takes some practice and it varies depending on relative humidity, how much water's in your flour, etc. There is no way to fix the dough once you've added too much water. You also can't work the dough a whole lot or it will get tough, so don't overstir.
Er. I should mention that this is *not* a friendly pie dough. This is a melt-in-your-mouth pie dough that will impress eighty-year-old ladies from the heart of pie country. Said old ladies will tear up on having a bite and say, in their wavery old-lady voices, "I didn't think anyone still knew how to make crust like this." If you want friendly, easy pie crust, go somewhere else. This is not that. This is the OTHER kind of pie crust, the kind that led to people using inferior bought pie crust because they couldn't hack making this kind.
Turn out the dough, press into a flattened beef-patty shape with your fingers, and roll it out with your well-floured rolling pin. You do NOT get a second chance at this. If you screw the pooch and make some ovular thing that won't fit your pie tin, you are not permitted to wad it up and try again to roll a better circle. That will make pie crust like leather, and we do not wish to eat leather. Leather is bad.
Roll from the center to the edge. Do not try to roll across the whole thing, that is not good. Work from the center to the edge. Try for a good-sized, mostly round product.
Also: Forget the whole marble pastry surface or the ice-filled rolling pin. These things condense if properly chilled. Condensation adds water. Water is *bad* for sticking. Do not go that route. Gadgets do not make good pie crust. Practice makes good pie crust. Forget the gadgets and practice, practice, practice.
Once you've rolled it out, roll up the pie crust like a scroll of paper, using a flipper/turner to free it from the countertop. Lift it up in 'scroll form' and unroll it over the pie tin. (This gets easier with practice.) Gently press the dough into the pie tin to make sure you got all the way to the corners. Patch any bare spots you might have with excess overhang.
Put pie tin (with bottom layer of dough) in fridge to keep it cold while you're working on the filling.
Peel 7 or 8 (depends on size) Stayman Winesap apples. These are round, unattractive, not-shiny apples with no shelf-appeal. They look like hell next to the shining Red Delicious, the glorious green Granny Smith, and the striped Gala apples. Don't worry. They might *look* like hell, but they don't taste that way at all. You can *sometimes* buy them in stores. I get mine from the local orchard. (I live in central Pennsylvania, arguably the best apple country in the world. I have a local orchard. You may not. Do the best you can.) Winesaps ripen in October, about the middle of the month, and they store well for the winter, very suitable for xmas baking.
Slice the apples up for pie... this is more important than you think it is. You are aiming for uniform, NOT WEDGE SHAPED, flat pieces that are thin enough for you to just barely be able to see the knife blade through. If you can't see the knife blade when you're slicing, then you are slicing too thick. If the slices are thinner than 1/8", then you are slicing too thin. You want big, flat slices. You DO NOT want wedges and you DO NOT want little fiddley bits. (If you use a peeler-corer-slicer, I do not want to know about it. I am turning away and pretending not to see you.) Do big flat slices, turn the apple 1/4 turn, do big flat slices, etc. You will have leftover square cores with some pretty decent meat on 'em. This can't be helped. (I feed the generous, meaty cores to an appreciative pony audience.) Do not cut the bits off and put them in your pie. The bits cook to mush and make a mushy pie. Mushy is bad.
Put the apple slices in a roomy bowl. In another, smallish bowl, mix 3/4 cup (Full disclosure: I personally like half a cup but most people think they like their apple pie sweeter than I do. In these directions, I compromised on 3/4 of a cup as an amount more in line with what people expect out of an apple pie. I use half a cup in my own pies.) of white sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and 3 Tbsp. white flour all together so that it's well mixed. I use a fork for this.
Forget the whole cornstarch thing, cornstarch is for peach pie and cherry pie and berry pie. FLOUR is for apple pie. For very juicy apples, you may need more than 3 Tbsp. of flour, but you'll learn what 'very juicy' looks like with experience.
Dump the cinnamon-sugar-flour mix over the apple slices and GENTLY fold the apple slices over and over until they are coated. You do not stir roughly or you will break the nice, flat apple slices you worked so hard to cut. (Some breakage is inevitable, but try to minimize it.)
Remove pie pan from fridge. Put apple slices in pie pan by dumping half of them in there, arranging them with your fingers (to fill all spaces fully), and then repeating the process with the second half of the apple mixture. The fruit should dome slightly above the pie tin. Give the pie tin a gentle back-and-forth shake to settle the fruit.
Many people have 'air' baked into their apple pies because they do not take care. Use uniform, flat slices that pack well. Employ only Stayman Winesap apples (in a pinch, Granny Smith OR Rome will work, but neither is as good. Cut the sugar down if using Rome.) for best results. Attempt to settle the apples ahead of time. Avoid the air-pie.
Dot the top of the fruit with four or five small pats of real butter. This adds richness to the filling.
Fix the second piece of pie crust and put it overtop of the pie Use the same "roll it up as a scroll, then airlift it over the pie tin and carefully unroll it" method that you employed so successfully to get the bottom part of the crust in the pie tin. No, I'm not being sarcastic. It works quite well, once you get the hang of it. (If your pie dough breaks apart when you try to roll it up, it is too dry. Add more water next time.) Then, trim off the excess dough. Tuck the edges under and crimp with your fingers for a pretty fluted edge. (Again, this is a practice thing and you'll get better the more you do it.) Using a sharp knife, do a "plus" pattern (use two jabs for each 'arm' of the plus), turn the pie 45 degrees, and do another "plus" pattern using single jabs to divide the pie into eight slices while creating steam vents. That's probably confusing as hell. (N.B. The world will not end if you fail to vent your pie the way I vent my pie. I like my method and think it's worthy, but you can do what you like.)
I am of the opinion that doing little fruit cutouts and other dough artistry is not conducive to making good pie crust. If you can do that sort of foolishness with your pie crust, it isn't short enough and it won't be tender enough. Aim for just this side of 'impossibly fragile' and you'll have pastry that melts in your mouth.
Put the pie in oven, bake 40 to 50 minutes. Pie is done when crust is lightly browned, apples are bubbling (usually you can hear 'em), and pie smells good. It really does take 40 to 50 minutes.
Remove pie from oven. Apple pie filling and crust will get firmer if you allow the pie to cool completely.
Crumb-topped apple pie is for people who can't make decent pie crust. Try not to be one of those people.
Cherry pie: Use sour Montmorency pie cherries. You will need a generous four cups of pitted sour cherries. To the fruit, add 1.25 cups of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon almond extract, and 4 Tbsp. of cornstarch. Do not add red food coloring. You don't need it and it will make people think you used sorry-ass bought pie filling like a lamer.
Peach pie: Use peaches that are ripe and give gently to the touch. Dead ripe peaches are juicier with less shape and will make a sloppier, but still tasty, pie. Unripe peaches (firm to the touch) are unsatisfactory. You will need about 7 peaches, peeled and cut into reasonably skinny wedges. Add 3/4 cup sugar, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon almond flavoring, 2 Tbsp. flour, and 2 Tbsp. cornstarch to the peaches.
Berry pie: You will need a generous four cups of berries. Add sugar to taste, usually about a cup. All berries are juicy and will need 3 Tbsp. cornstarch, 3 Tbsp. flour to help settle them. A small amount of almond flavoring (1/4 teasp.) probably wouldn't hurt, but you won't need cinnamon. Berry pies (blackberry, blueberry, raspberry) usually boil over. Badly. The prudent baker puts a cookie sheet on the oven shelf underneath his or her berry pie.
Making good pie is like being able to play the piano. It takes some practice. If you try to make pie three or four times, have three or four less-than-perfect pies, and then quit because it's "too difficult", that's like sitting down at a piano three or four times in your life and being disappointed that you can't play Chopin's Concerto No. 2 in F minor like a pro. D'oh.
The ingredient missing from most pie crust recipes is practice. Learning to make very good pie will probably take you around twenty not-so-perfect pies, the vast bulk of which will be edible. You will learn most effectively if you can make at least one pie per week.
Here's how I make apple pie (read entire set of directions and commentary first before attempting to make pie):
Preheat oven to 350.
For 1 crust (you need two, a top and a bottom, so you will be making this twice):
1.5 cups white flour (I use Gold Medal all purpose. Have never tried the 'for baking' kind.)
.5 cup
half a teaspoon salt
Mash all the above together in a good-sized bowl using a fork or a pastry blender. Mash together well. You want something that looks rather like cornmeal and is all evenly mixed.
Add 3-4 Tablespoons ICE COLD WATER.
The cool water from your tap is not good enough. Please run a glass of water, add ice, and let it sit for ten minutes, then measure from that. Do NOT just use cool water from the tap. It makes a difference. I'm not kidding.
Start with the low end of the water and stir. Dough should just hold together in two or three big lumps when you've added the water. Stir it fifteen, twenty strokes in a 'round and round' pattern with a fork before deciding if it 'holds together' or not -- it holds together better with some stirring, so your initial assessment might be off.
If you add too much water, the dough will be too sticky. If you add too little water, the dough will be too fragile and won't hold together. This takes some practice and it varies depending on relative humidity, how much water's in your flour, etc. There is no way to fix the dough once you've added too much water. You also can't work the dough a whole lot or it will get tough, so don't overstir.
Er. I should mention that this is *not* a friendly pie dough. This is a melt-in-your-mouth pie dough that will impress eighty-year-old ladies from the heart of pie country. Said old ladies will tear up on having a bite and say, in their wavery old-lady voices, "I didn't think anyone still knew how to make crust like this." If you want friendly, easy pie crust, go somewhere else. This is not that. This is the OTHER kind of pie crust, the kind that led to people using inferior bought pie crust because they couldn't hack making this kind.
Turn out the dough, press into a flattened beef-patty shape with your fingers, and roll it out with your well-floured rolling pin. You do NOT get a second chance at this. If you screw the pooch and make some ovular thing that won't fit your pie tin, you are not permitted to wad it up and try again to roll a better circle. That will make pie crust like leather, and we do not wish to eat leather. Leather is bad.
Roll from the center to the edge. Do not try to roll across the whole thing, that is not good. Work from the center to the edge. Try for a good-sized, mostly round product.
Also: Forget the whole marble pastry surface or the ice-filled rolling pin. These things condense if properly chilled. Condensation adds water. Water is *bad* for sticking. Do not go that route. Gadgets do not make good pie crust. Practice makes good pie crust. Forget the gadgets and practice, practice, practice.
Once you've rolled it out, roll up the pie crust like a scroll of paper, using a flipper/turner to free it from the countertop. Lift it up in 'scroll form' and unroll it over the pie tin. (This gets easier with practice.) Gently press the dough into the pie tin to make sure you got all the way to the corners. Patch any bare spots you might have with excess overhang.
Put pie tin (with bottom layer of dough) in fridge to keep it cold while you're working on the filling.
Peel 7 or 8 (depends on size) Stayman Winesap apples. These are round, unattractive, not-shiny apples with no shelf-appeal. They look like hell next to the shining Red Delicious, the glorious green Granny Smith, and the striped Gala apples. Don't worry. They might *look* like hell, but they don't taste that way at all. You can *sometimes* buy them in stores. I get mine from the local orchard. (I live in central Pennsylvania, arguably the best apple country in the world. I have a local orchard. You may not. Do the best you can.) Winesaps ripen in October, about the middle of the month, and they store well for the winter, very suitable for xmas baking.
Slice the apples up for pie... this is more important than you think it is. You are aiming for uniform, NOT WEDGE SHAPED, flat pieces that are thin enough for you to just barely be able to see the knife blade through. If you can't see the knife blade when you're slicing, then you are slicing too thick. If the slices are thinner than 1/8", then you are slicing too thin. You want big, flat slices. You DO NOT want wedges and you DO NOT want little fiddley bits. (If you use a peeler-corer-slicer, I do not want to know about it. I am turning away and pretending not to see you.) Do big flat slices, turn the apple 1/4 turn, do big flat slices, etc. You will have leftover square cores with some pretty decent meat on 'em. This can't be helped. (I feed the generous, meaty cores to an appreciative pony audience.) Do not cut the bits off and put them in your pie. The bits cook to mush and make a mushy pie. Mushy is bad.
Put the apple slices in a roomy bowl. In another, smallish bowl, mix 3/4 cup (Full disclosure: I personally like half a cup but most people think they like their apple pie sweeter than I do. In these directions, I compromised on 3/4 of a cup as an amount more in line with what people expect out of an apple pie. I use half a cup in my own pies.) of white sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and 3 Tbsp. white flour all together so that it's well mixed. I use a fork for this.
Forget the whole cornstarch thing, cornstarch is for peach pie and cherry pie and berry pie. FLOUR is for apple pie. For very juicy apples, you may need more than 3 Tbsp. of flour, but you'll learn what 'very juicy' looks like with experience.
Dump the cinnamon-sugar-flour mix over the apple slices and GENTLY fold the apple slices over and over until they are coated. You do not stir roughly or you will break the nice, flat apple slices you worked so hard to cut. (Some breakage is inevitable, but try to minimize it.)
Remove pie pan from fridge. Put apple slices in pie pan by dumping half of them in there, arranging them with your fingers (to fill all spaces fully), and then repeating the process with the second half of the apple mixture. The fruit should dome slightly above the pie tin. Give the pie tin a gentle back-and-forth shake to settle the fruit.
Many people have 'air' baked into their apple pies because they do not take care. Use uniform, flat slices that pack well. Employ only Stayman Winesap apples (in a pinch, Granny Smith OR Rome will work, but neither is as good. Cut the sugar down if using Rome.) for best results. Attempt to settle the apples ahead of time. Avoid the air-pie.
Dot the top of the fruit with four or five small pats of real butter. This adds richness to the filling.
Fix the second piece of pie crust and put it overtop of the pie Use the same "roll it up as a scroll, then airlift it over the pie tin and carefully unroll it" method that you employed so successfully to get the bottom part of the crust in the pie tin. No, I'm not being sarcastic. It works quite well, once you get the hang of it. (If your pie dough breaks apart when you try to roll it up, it is too dry. Add more water next time.) Then, trim off the excess dough. Tuck the edges under and crimp with your fingers for a pretty fluted edge. (Again, this is a practice thing and you'll get better the more you do it.) Using a sharp knife, do a "plus" pattern (use two jabs for each 'arm' of the plus), turn the pie 45 degrees, and do another "plus" pattern using single jabs to divide the pie into eight slices while creating steam vents. That's probably confusing as hell. (N.B. The world will not end if you fail to vent your pie the way I vent my pie. I like my method and think it's worthy, but you can do what you like.)
I am of the opinion that doing little fruit cutouts and other dough artistry is not conducive to making good pie crust. If you can do that sort of foolishness with your pie crust, it isn't short enough and it won't be tender enough. Aim for just this side of 'impossibly fragile' and you'll have pastry that melts in your mouth.
Put the pie in oven, bake 40 to 50 minutes. Pie is done when crust is lightly browned, apples are bubbling (usually you can hear 'em), and pie smells good. It really does take 40 to 50 minutes.
Remove pie from oven. Apple pie filling and crust will get firmer if you allow the pie to cool completely.
Crumb-topped apple pie is for people who can't make decent pie crust. Try not to be one of those people.
Cherry pie: Use sour Montmorency pie cherries. You will need a generous four cups of pitted sour cherries. To the fruit, add 1.25 cups of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon almond extract, and 4 Tbsp. of cornstarch. Do not add red food coloring. You don't need it and it will make people think you used sorry-ass bought pie filling like a lamer.
Peach pie: Use peaches that are ripe and give gently to the touch. Dead ripe peaches are juicier with less shape and will make a sloppier, but still tasty, pie. Unripe peaches (firm to the touch) are unsatisfactory. You will need about 7 peaches, peeled and cut into reasonably skinny wedges. Add 3/4 cup sugar, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon almond flavoring, 2 Tbsp. flour, and 2 Tbsp. cornstarch to the peaches.
Berry pie: You will need a generous four cups of berries. Add sugar to taste, usually about a cup. All berries are juicy and will need 3 Tbsp. cornstarch, 3 Tbsp. flour to help settle them. A small amount of almond flavoring (1/4 teasp.) probably wouldn't hurt, but you won't need cinnamon. Berry pies (blackberry, blueberry, raspberry) usually boil over. Badly. The prudent baker puts a cookie sheet on the oven shelf underneath his or her berry pie.
