It is family tradition that the oldest child becomes the pie baker... Unfortunately this means that no one else in my family bakes pies! I love baking on my own, I really do; but some things are more fun when you're doing them with someone else who has a similar passion. Well, with this last type (well, types) of pie (pies) I made I got lucky. Anyone know who Wissner is? She happens to be pretty much the most AMAZING woman in the world and the ELI Coordinator at Moscow High School. She also happens to be fantastic at baking pies. For this last round of pie I got to go over to her house so we could make pie together! How cool is that?! The other nice thing about this was that we had the chance to do two different apple pies, one using her apple pie recipe and the other using one of the apple pie recipes from my book; and we also used her pie dough recipe which was new for me because it uses shortening instead of butter. This was, without a doubt, the BEST pie making experience I have had so far this semester... and now you get to hear all about it.
As always, I'll start with the crust. Near the beginning of this year I did some research on the pros and cons of using butter, shortening, or lard as the fat in a pie crust. Butter is nice because it tastes amazing and makes lovely flaky crusts; but it can be hard to work with because it melts at such low temperatures. Shortening is WAY easier to work with and also makes tender crusts; but it lacks that great flavor and because of it's soft nature if you aren't careful you might end up over-working the dough. Lard is the easiest to work with out of all of them and makes SUPER flaky crusts; but it's really difficult to find good lard the won't leave the crust with a piggy sort of aftertaste. Personally I've always loved the taste of a butter crust enough that I didn't really care that it was difficult to work with... But a shortening crust is actually pretty good as well.
Whether you're making a crust with butter or shortening, you start out the same exact way. Mix together the flour, sugar, and salt. Then it's time for the fat. With butter you have to have it SUPER cold and then you have to cut it up into squares and work it into the flour mixture until the biggest butter pieces are the size of small peas... Shortening is SO much easier. For starters, the cold temperature isn't such a big deal. With butter you keep it cold so that it won't meld, with shortening you don't have to worry about that. The other nice thing about shortening is that you can mix it in with your hands and quickly get it into pea sized clumps because it's not these solid cold butter cubes... it's mushy shortening.
It took about a quarter of the time it would have taken to incorporate butter (well, except that usually I cheat and use the food processor for incorporating my butter) and then we just added the water and... tada! Within a matter of moments we had our dough balls ready to roll out! It was record pie dough making time for me and I LOVED IT!
The other cool thing is that even though it lacked the buttery taste, it still tasted GOOD. I still plan on mostly doing my butter crusts... but that's more because I never have shortening in my house than that I hate shortening crusts. If I'm in a hurry and I have shortening on hand then you can bet I'm going to use it!
The other great thing that Wissner showed me is this cool way to roll out you dough. What you do is take two sheets of wax paper and place you dough ball between them. You kinda flatten the ball with you hand and then start to roll it out. The wax paper prevents the dough from sticking to the counter or the rolling pin so you can roll it out completely without ever having to add extra flour! Once you're done rolling it out all you do is peal off the top layer of wax paper, then set it back on the dough, peal of the bottom layer of wax paper and leave that one of, and then use the first wax paper layer to flip the dough into the pan, and then take the wax paper off again! Just like that you have your dough in place with no fear of tearing it in the moving process and no issues with it sticking to the counter!
As exciting as pie crusts are... A pie isn't really a pie without a filling. When I started this ELI the first pie I made was and Apple Pie. It's only fitting that my last pie(s) would be different versions of apple. Wissner and I did an Apple Pandowdy Pie (for that one we used Wissner's apple filling recipe), and a Cinnamon Apple Crumb Pie (for that we used my book's apple filling). Both pies called for apples of course, and so the first task was pealing off the skins. When I usually do Apple Pie I'll use my nifty little device that peals the apples, cuts them into ringlets, and avoids the core entirely... For my first ELI Apple Pie however I used a knife to peal my apples because I wanted to cut them into thicker slices. For these Apple Pies I used a hand-held peeler of Wissner's because I didn't think to bring my nifty little device (still need to learn what it's actually called) with me. The little hand-peeler was actually REALLY fun to use! I even managed to peal one apple and keep the peel in one long strand:
Isn't it amazing how such a simple accomplishment can give us so much pleasure. Well once all the apples were peeled we cut them into quarters and then used the grater appliance on Wissner's food processor to cut them into even slices. It worked like a charm! With all of the apple slices ready we went ahead and put together the two different fillings. The fillings actually weren't all that different... apples, sugar, lemon juice, sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon... One of them used nutmeg and the other didn't. One had more sugar in it and the other just had some other spices; but they were basically the same.
With the fillings all ready we moved on to what really differentiates these two pies... the top crust. I'll start with the Apple Pandowdy Pie. For the Pandowdy you go ahead and put your filling in your crust, and then put a top crust on as well and seal the edges. Next you bake the pie for about thirty minutes before pulling it out of the oven again. When you pull it out it looks like this:
With this partially baked pie you take a sharp knife and cut the top crust in a criss-cross pattern to create one inch squares. So I cut it first one way:
And then the other... Then you take a spatula and actually press the squares down INTO the apples:
Right here it looks really strange but you're not done yet. You sprinkle the top with sugar and then finish baking the pie. When all's said and done you're left with this:
I think it looks pretty cool!
The Cinnamon Apple Crumb Pie is quite different... mainly because it doesn't have a top crust per-say. Instead of doing a crust you make a crumb topping. The crumb topping consists of flour, sugar, cinnamon, salt, and butter that is all mixed together in a food processor. With the topping made you go ahead and put the apples in the pie crust, sprinkle liberally with the crumb topping, and bake:
Trust me when I say that this was ONE DELICIOUS PIE! In the end both pies were amazing. The Apple Pandowdy Pie wasn't as sweet. That was the one we used Wissner's filling on which called for less sugar in the first place and also the top crust didn't have all that much sugar on it. With that said, there were some people who preferred that. I liked the Cinnamon Apple Crumb Pie best. Between the extra sugar in the filling and the sugar in the crumb topping it was AMAZING. That is one pie that can satisfy your sweet tooth with ease. In the end both pies were a total success! Everybody loved them; and I learned a lot while making them. When I go off to college and am without that nifty little apple peeler/ringleter device I now know that a hand-peeler works just as well. Oh, and next time I have to roll out a pie crust I am TOTALLY using wax paper! Well, this is my last pie blog... So, BIG thanks to Wissner for her help with these pies! It's so much more fun baking with someone else!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment