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| Mom Mom Jessie as a newlywed |
My husband's sweet grandmother Mom Mom Jessie passed away last month at the age of 97. Jessie was the oldest of eight siblings, born in 1921 to a huge farm family that grew just about everything in the rich soil of southern New Jersey. Being the oldest. she was her mother's right hand and learned how to run the household, care for her brothers and sisters and, of course, cook. She married a south Jersey farm boy and they raised two kids, passing her love of simple and wholesome cooking down to future generations. Mom Mom learned to make everything from scratch by hand without the benefit of fancy kitchen gadgets and electronics. She pickled, she made jam, she preserved vegetables and she baked. At her funeral, praises were sung over and over about Mom Mom's pies. My husband has always raved about Mom Mom's pies and he speaks with loving nostalgia about her sour cherry pie made with cherries from her brother's farm. So I set out to follow her lead and make a pie from scratch.
Not long after my husband and I got engaged, we were talking to Mom Mom on the phone and I asked her to share her tips for making pie crust. I'd recently had a failed attempt and I was sure she had some farm wisdom that would set me on the right path. Mom Mom's answer was totally not what I expected. "To be honest, I haven't made a pie crust in years", she said, "my secret is Pillsbury. Its so much easier and tastes just fine". She laughed sheepishly. Mom Mom didn't realize it at the time, but her comment gave me permission to be lazy all these years and not learn how to make my own pie crust. Its high time I mastered this most basic kitchen skill.
APPLE PIE
Pie crust:
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 sticks (8 oz) unsalted butter, cut into cubes and very cold.
6-7 tbsp ice water
Filling:
6 apples, peeled, cored and sliced thinly
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
2 tbsp good quality honey or maple syrup
2 tbsp all purpose flour
1 tbsp corn starch
1 tsp cinnamon
zest of one large lemon
juice from half a lemon
There is nothing quite as satisfying as a well made apple pie. My mother made a lot of apple pies when I was growing up. It was standard fare on every holiday table and while I helped her many times, I couldn't tell you how she made the crust. There something daunting and mysterious about pie crust and the one time I tried to make it myself, I overworked it and it was tough and bland. Its not terribly difficult, but there are several variables and a lot can go wrong with the smallest mistakes. The proportions of fat to flour, the temperature of the ingredients, the moisture content and the way the dough is made can all have profound affects on the final product. A good pie crust should be tender, flaky and have a rich, buttery flavor.
My research started with my go-to source for all baking knowledge -
Baking With Julia - the companion book to Julia Child's wonderful PBS series. Julia's basic pie dough recipe called for a mixture of butter and shortening, explaining that shortening yields a flakier crust, but butter brings the flavor. This is because shortening has more water in it, which evaporates during baking and creates that distinctive flaky texture. Butter has less water and creates a more crumbly crust with tons of flavor. Also, the fat needs to be ice cold so it stays in small pieces as the dough comes together. Those small pieces of fat melt during baking and the water evaporates, leaving an air pocket in the crust, which gives it that flaky texture. If the fat gets too warm, it melts and disintegrates into the flour, leaving no air pockets and no flaky texture. I didn't happen to have shortening in my pantry, but I did have 2 sticks of
Amish rolled butter with 84% butterfat. I cut them into large chunks and put them on a plate in the freezer to get them well chilled while I measured out the rest of my ingredients.
I measured my dry ingredients directly into the bowl of the food processor fitted with the blade attachment, pulsing a few times to sift them together before adding the cold cubes of butter. I pulsed the food processor until the mixture resembled course cornmeal and there were still quite a few largish chunks of butter remaining. One tablespoon at a time, I added ice water and pulsed the processor until the mixture just started the come together, but hadn't yet formed a ball. I took a small handful of the dough, squeezed it in my hand and it held together. The dough had a crumbly texture, but once it was turned out onto my work surface, it came together into a mass. One of the classic mistakes you can make with pie dough is to overwork it, which results in a tough, hard crust. This dough should not be kneaded and requires at least an hour to rest and chill in the fridge before it gets rolled out. I split the dough in half, worked each half into a rough ball and transferred it to a sheet of plastic wrap, which I used to press and shape the dough into a smooth and evenly round disk. With my pie dough chillin' in the fridge, I turned my attention to the apples.
The variety of
apple you use makes a tremendous difference in the flavor and texture of the pie. Some varieties like Red Delicious and Rome become mushy when they are cooked. Cooking can also change the flavor, causing some apples to become too sweet or just bland. Granny Smith apples are known for keeping their shape when they cook, but they are very tart. A mixture of different varieties will result in the best flavor and texture. I chose a combination of Granny Smith, Macintosh and Gala apples, which I peeled, cored and sliced very thinly. I added all the other ingredients to the apples and set them aside to
macerate in their own juices and soften before baking.
After about 2 hours in the fridge, the pie dough was firm, rested and ready to rock. I left it sitting on the counter for about 20 minutes so it could warm up just a bit before I started rolling it out. I also set my oven to 375 so I could
blind bake the bottom crust. Blink baking is a technique where you pre-bake the bottom crust to make sure it stays crispy as you bake your pie. My mother never blind baked her pie crusts and the bottom was always floppy, doughy and under-cooked. For most of my life, I thought that's how all pies were supposed to taste because that was all I knew, but when I experienced a well-baked pie crust for the first time, I knew there was room for improvement in my mother's technique. Now, I never bake a fruit pie without blind baking the crust. I unwrapped one piece of dough and started working it a bit with my hands.
It was a really stiff dough that still had kind of a crumbly texture and it was not an easy task to roll it out into a somewhat circular shape. It kept cracking around the edges and I had to roll the edges together and pinch them as I went to keep the dough together in a single piece. It was also pretty sticky and I had to flour the surface and flip the dough quite a few times to keep it from sticking to the table. But I finally managed to get it rolled out and into the pie plate. I trimmed the edges, built the dough up to make a nice border and placed it in the fridge to firm up for 15 minutes before blink baking. When it was chilled, I poked little holes all over the bottom of the dough to allow steam to escape as it bakes, which keeps it from bubbling up, then placed a sheet of parchment into the center of the crust and filled it with beans. I keep a jar of beans in my pantry that I only use for this purpose. The beans act as weights that keep the crust flat and prevent it from sliding down into the pie plate as it bakes. After 20 minutes in a 375 degree oven, the edges of the crust had just started to brown and I removed it from the oven and let it cool down while I rolled out the top crust. I also turned the oven down to 325, which is the perfect temperature to bake the pie long enough for the apples to cook without burning the crust.
Since it had been out of the fridge for about an hour, the top crust was a little easier to roll out. I managed to get it pretty thin and by the time I was done, the bottom crust had cooled enough to work with. I poured all the apples into bottom crust and gingerly draped the top crust over the apples. I cut the edges of the dough off so they were even with the border, but there was a gap between the partially baked bottom crust and the raw top crust. So I gathered up all the scraps of dough, formed them into a ball and I rolled it into a long, thin rope, which I used to encase the outside of the border of the bottom crust, bringing the raw top crust over it and crimping the edges with my fingers. It looked pretty nice, actually, and I was proud of my ability to solve a problem quickly with scraps of dough. Before I put it in the oven, I carved a heart into the center of the top crust to allow the filling to vent as it cooked. Then I painted the entire pie with a beaten egg and sprinkled the top liberally with
Demerara sugar. If you don't have this light brown sugar in large crystals in your pantry, I strongly suggest you get some. It is perfect for topping pies, cakes, cookies and muffins and yields a crunchy, sweet exterior to any baked item.
The pie needs at least an hour to bake and it should be placed on a baking sheet to make sure any juices that run out don't drip onto the bottom of your oven and burn. The pie is done when you can see the juices bubbling under the air vents you cut into the top crust. Some juices will probably leak out into the center of the pie and that's just fine. I took my perfectly browned pie out of the oven and set it on the counter to cool. An hour later, I sliced a piece for both my husband and myself and added a small scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side. Its hard to accurately describe how scrumptious this pie truly was. The fruit was perfectly cooked with lots of visible slices of apple that still had some texture. Because of the combo of flour and corn starch in the filling, the juices had thickened up nicely and were slightly viscous without being gooey or gummy. The bottom crust was cooked through and slightly browned, just as it should be. Overall, the crust was delicate and tender and had a crumbly texture, almost like shortbread, with a strong buttery flavor. It was absolutely divine. I figure the best way to honor Mom Mom's memory is to cook like she did, with the freshest ingredients, a little common sense and a lot of love. I think she would have been proud of this apple pie. Cheers to you, Mom Mom, wherever you are.
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