Peach

You know how I keep on raving about how using a food processor helps making pie crusts SO much faster?  Yeah well it turns out that using it at the wrong times can make things stretch on much LONGER than they usually would.  I read once in an article by this pie expert named Kenji Lopez-Alt that it is VERY important to use a spatula to incorporate your water.  Not a FOOD PROCESSOR, a SPATULA...  I really should have listened to advice.  The problem was, I was hurrying.  I had used the food processor to incorporate the butter, it would be so much easier to just add the water and use the food processor.  And so the nightmare began... I added the water:

At first all seemed to be well.  I pulsed the processor, the mixture began to come together... well, it sort of began to come together.  The flour and water joined into these little mini balls but when I took a handful and squoze it came together...

I wasn't quite sure what to do with this mixture so I just dumped it out on the counter...

And then kinda forced it into a ball...

And then cut it in half so I could make two crusts...

It was starting to feel like I'd over-worked the dough.  It took WAY too much effort to make it come together into a ball; but looking at where I'd cut it there also seemed to be air pockets (sorta) so I took that to be a good sign.  I began rolling out my dough and pretty soon I realized I had a problem.  This was the most finicky, delicate, tearable crust I had ever dealt with.  Well, maybe with the exception of my first attempt at a Lemon Meringue crust; but if you'll recall I actually had to throw that one out.  This crust just decided to stick to the counter, to my rolling pin... and then when it wasn't sticking it was tearing!  I rolled it out once... it stuck and tore and was hopeless.  So I rolled it out again... and then tried again... and then again... And then FINALLY I managed to get it into the pan with only a few minor rips that I patched up.

It had taken me an hour to roll out my crust... Adding water to the mixture in the food processor, not a good idea.  What's more, I had WAY over-handled the dough at this point.  Goodbye to flakiness.

With that bit (finally) over I moved on to my filling.  I love Peach Pie.  Partially because whenever I make it I use my mom's canned peaches.  They always taste WAY better than store-bought; and it's nice to see that the work I put into helping her can stuff is worth it.

There they are... good old home-canned peaches.  Oh yeah, and that's my pie cookbook in the background.  Well with the peaches looking amazing it was time for the sugar mixture.  It was a pretty typical mix: sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, pinch of salt, and... well what do you know... quick-cooking tapioca.  It took all of ten minutes to get my sugar mixture together, coat my peaches in it, and get them into the (over-handled) dough-lined pan.

I know it doesn't look all that great in that picture... at all... in fact it looks pretty disgusting... But that's the reason you add a top to a peach pie!  The top crust was made from the same dough as my bottom crust; so (not surprisingly) it gave me just as much trouble.  In the end I did manage to get it rolled out and on top of the pie... but it sure was a headache.  With the crust on top I was looking at a rather sad image of a pie. I needed to do something to spice things up... So I tried a new edge!  I've heard it called several things but I call it a chessboard edge.

It looks kinda cool right?  Well it's really simple.  You just go around the edge of the pie and every inch you make a little slice.  Then you go around and fold every other flap.  Sometimes I've heard that you're just supposed to leave that flap up, other books tell you to fold it over itself.  I decided to actually fold it over (though this picture doesn't show where I did that).  With that done I made a few quick slits at the top (this pie had a LOT of liquids and it's important for some of those to be able to boil off and escape through steam vents) and stuck it in the oven.  An hour later I had this...

It actually looks pretty good, and it tasted great as well!  Now I had learned my lesson about tapioca from the Summer Berry Pie so I was careful to let it cool completely before coming anywhere near it with a knife.  Even though the pie turned out okay in the end there was one major disappointing factor... the crust was NOT flakey.  Incorporating the water with the food processor is a horrible idea and I swear to never do it again.  Despite the non-flakiness of my crust though my ELI class still managed to enjoy it!