Favorite Pie

It takes one hell of a bakery to produce anything approaching the goodness of the lamest homemade pie. Why this is I do not know. Many good bakeries produce excellent flat tarts, and wonderful cakes, but a regular old American pie from the same place is often a sad thing. Some diners and restaurants have excellent pies-so what is the story? It may be partially a question of fresh-from-the -oven-ness, but that can't be the whole deal, since homemade pie is also better in its leftover form.

I suspect it has to do with the fact that a really good pie is generally not perfect-looking. Crusts which are underhandled are flakier and better than those without flaw, which have been manhandled into perfection. Probably bakeries have found that their customers don't want stuff that looks imperfect- they think there's something wrong with it. Even my pie-making idols-ladies of my mother's generation who were practised, slick makers of zillions of delicious homemade pies made pies clearly not the work of a machine. Their pies looked tons more skillful than anything I turn out, but they were hand work, and didn't hide it.

It's nice that there are luxuries so easily available to anyone not so poor as to be lacking decent food and shelter, which are virtually unknown to folks who never do any of their own housework. Like line-dried-in the-sun sheets, for another example. But I'm wandering off topic again.

When I say this is my favorite pie, I mean my favorite American style, pyrex pie plate kind of pie. It would be hard to decide between this little number and a lemon tart or tarte tatin. It is even pretty hard to relegate cherry, rhubarb, blackberry and the other lovelies to lesser spots in line. I just love pie. Way more than cakes, or cookies, or even ice cream, they are splendiforous. A nectarine or peach pie with blueberries is gorgeous and wildly aromatic, juicy and tangy, and smells of summer.

Generally, I make it as an ordinary 2 crust pie. As you can see, I am not a particularly gifted hand at the lattice crust. I tend to cut crooked strips, and panic when they break while I'm setting them up. Still, I'll never get better at it without some practice, and I do think the colorful filling deserves a bit of showing off. I generally make more crust than I really need for a double-crusted pie, so that I can cover up mistakes by patching, and don't have to roll everything out just so. I like to use some real lard in a crust, but when I don't have any of the real stuff, I use a combination of butter and crisco. I start with 3 cups of flour, which would theoretically make a 10" double crust pie, but my pan is 9 inches.I just make little cinnamon-sugar thingies with the leftover dough. They are nice with ice cream. This pie crust (which is pretty much a standard fruit pie crust for me) has:

flour 3 cups
sugar 1 tbsp
salt 1 tsp
1 egg yolk
1 tsp lemon juice
unsalted butter 12 tbsps chilled or frozen
crisco or lard 4 tbsps chilled or frozen
ice water

It's made in the usual way in the food processor: Dry ingredients are fluffed up. Then the butter and crisco are cut into small squares and added, and the contents pulsed until the over-all texture is mealy. The egg yolk and lemon are pulsed in, and ice water added through the tube while it runs, just until the whole thing comes together. A hour is usually enough chilling time to roll them out.

The filling has:
6 nectarines, sliced-no need to peel them, but if using peaches, you must peel
pint blueberries
2/3 cup sugar
3 tbsps cornstarch (I don't like to use so much thickening, but this is a very damp filling.)
squirt each orange juice and lime juice
sprinkle each cinnamon, nutmeg

It is dotted with butter. Because the filling can be so moist, I generally sprinkle some fine dry breadcrumbs on the bottom crust before pouring it in. I may be deluding myself, but I think it keeps the bottom crust from extreme sogginess. This pie has a light egg glaze with a sprinkling of coarse sanding sugar on top for color and a little crunchiness. Obviously, these last are entirely optional.

Comments

[anapestic]

My mother always made much better looking pie crusts than I do, too. I suspect that it has something to do with the amount and composition of fat. My crust (and yours, from the recipe) is a good deal more short than Mom's, and a shorter crust deforms more easily, especially under heat. I think the same is true of crusts that rely more heavily on butter than on shortening, which Mom always used. Mom also didn't have to be as careful with chilling her crust, probably for the same reason. I've noticed that no matter how good the finger crimp looks when it goes into the oven, it loses a good deal of its shape before it comes out. Anyway, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Of course, part of the reason probably has to do with the nature of memory. Pie is something I've loved for as long as I can remember, so any slight imperfections in the shape of the crust would likely have been edited out by a perfectly reasonable fondness for the subject matter.

[Tanna]

I should be so lucky to get my pies coming out of the oven like yours! We had a really good lamb tagine for dinner and I wish I had your pie for dessert!
So beautiful.

[Kimberly]

Oh, Lindy, how beautiful! By the time we get really good local peaches and blueberries this summer, our kitchen will be in the middle of a remodel. (We're demolishing this weekend!) I'll be freezing more fruit than usual this summer, unless I find a kitchen to borrow for canning and baking.

There are blueberries in the pie, yes? There are none in the recipe as I read it now.

[lindy]

pestic-I am happy to have extra excuses! I was always stinky at finger-crimping .
tanna-I'd like some of that lamb, myself.
kimberly-thanks! I fixed the recipe. I seem to have more tendencies to that sort of mistake when I'm not working from a book recipe!

[Julie]

Your pie looks perfect -- the essence of summer. And the lime and orange juice rather than the usual lemon is a lovely touch.

I just tried a crisp with peaches and blueberries and it was not nearly as successful as your pie. In fact, it was unsuccessful, due mainly, I think, to the amount of juice the fruits produced.

[Fran]

What a great post! Beautiful pie! I thoroughly concur with your comments. Seems even high end bakeries don't do them justice as you certainly do.

[steven]

I'm patiently waiting for neighbor's blueberries to ripen so I can make pie. I intend to use lard for the crust, put butter in the berries and eat the pie with homemade vanilla ice cream and have a defibrillator handy.

[Rebecca]

What a gorgeous pie! My crust recipe is very similar to yours but I hardly ever have to patience to make the lattice top; it does look nice, though. I really love the peach (or nectarine)/blueberry combination, too.

[lindy]

Julie-Thank you, you are very kind to say so. It is a really drippy filling, I think it does need a bit of stiffening up.
Fran-the very day after I wrote this, someone brought some leftover store pie to work which was ridiculously good! It was multi-berry plus rhubarb. Still, a rarity I think, though.
steven- The "safety committee" came around today at work, and I signed up for my CPR recertification class-(I'm not making this up!) Of course this will largely benefit the other pie eaters in my office, rather than yrs. truly. But after the class, I'll know who to sit near at lunch.
rebecca-I remember you mentioning there was egg in your crust too. I think it tenderizes it-but it may be my imagination?

[pyewacket]

Restaurants make crappy pies because:

1) Pie crust resists large-scale production. Jut a few crusts at a time is labor-intensive. So you end up with either insanely expensive pies or frozen crusts.

2) Fresh fruit for pie filling is very expensive compared to, say, flour, sugar, butter, eggs, lemon juice, cocoa, and the other bakery basics. Also, fresh fruit is labor-intensive. So you end up with either insanely expensive pies or frozen fruit.

3) Frozen fruit and frozen crusts make lousy pies.

4) People won't pay for expensive pies. Pie are homey, and available for cheap at the local store and people can't imagine spending more on pie than on cake.

5) And one more thing on your very valid point about the homemade look of pies - a really good pie spills juice all over its plate. Only crappy pies are so full of cornstarch they hold their shape. But fancy restaurants don't wnat messy desserts, and lower-end restaurants won't spend the money on great pies.

Conclusions: be grateful for every homemade pie.

[Leland]

If you say yours is not a gifted hand, I haven't got a prayer! My life goal is to produce such a lattice crust.

[lobstersquad]

Please, please, what is crisco? I see it in cookbooks and am utterly baffled.
that pie looks amazing, btw, straight out of Tom Sawyer.

[lindy]

pyewacket-can't argue with most of that. Except that I do think that a homemade crust, frozen, is fine.
leland-I guess you'd have to see the debris, composed of broken strips, I have left at the end, to appreciate the klutz factor. Fortunately, you can make extra dough.
lobstersquad- It's solid vegetable shortening-white-looks like lard. There are other brands, but crisco must have been the first, as it has acquired a generic meaning. Kind of like "band-aids" for elastic bandages.

[eg]

We have a shop near here called The Pie Gourmet. Their pies are actually pretty good but I think that they are a bit expensive. They seem to start at 15.95 for the 8". Most people don't think that they can make pie crust and they are willing to pay someone else to do so.

[Rebecca]

I do use an egg in my pie crust, a whole egg, and one of these days, perhaps in the next 2 weeks when I won't be able to cook much due to the kitchen construction, I'll post the recipe. And yes, it makes for a tender crust but you lose out on flakiness. But it makes it MUCH easier to handle and more reliable. I also add the acid, a T. of vinegar, but I see you use lemon juice.

Last week W.F. had their fruit pies on sale for about half price, $7.99. They are quite good and use good ingredients, butter in the crust, etc., but they're still not as good as a homemade pie.

[farmgirl]

Yum! Lovely job. I absolutely adore pie. The combination of nectarines and blueberries sounds divine--I've never tried it or even heard of it.

I agree with Rebecca that an egg or egg yolk added to the pie crust makes it much easier to handle. I used to use an egg crust for making lots and lots of savory Cornish-style pasties when I had my little bakery cafe. I never would have had the patience to hand roll out all those small circles of dough if it weren't for that crust.

[june]

Ahha, so this is what American Pie is all about. I have had bad luck, being faced with squdgy things that are too sweet and too gloopy in diners, and I had a dim view of this great classic. Thanks for putting me right!