Recipe #2 Apple Pie

I used a combination of Golden Delicious and McIntosh from Stribling Orchard to bake my first apple pie of the season. While this recipe is out of order as far as my plan for going through Peterson's book, with fresh picked apples on hand, I couldn't help myself!

The traditional apple pie calls for an unsweetened double crust. I was craving something else, so I decided to make the pie with a sweet Classic French dough.

With Roscoe napping sporadically, I had to work the pie in fits and starts. During his morning nap I made the crust and put it in the fridge to chill. The sweet crust is best made in a mixer, which was fine with me, because I didn't have time to hand mix the dough. With only a few ingredients, it tasted like a sugar cookie.

Later, I put Roscoe in the Moby and we peeled, cored, and sliced all the apples. I rolled out the dough an hour or two later. It was pretty soft, and kept breaking, a sign that it was too warm. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to re-refrigerate it, so I just pieced it together in the bottom of the pie pan, added sugar to the apples and piled them high, sliced the butter into little pats, and rolled out the second crust.


By this time, Roscoe was screaming so I really didn't take much care in beautifying my creation. Last, I brushed the top with an egg white wash, sprinkled it with sugar, and then cut five little slits in the top. In light of the time crunch, I still think it looked pretty!


I later realized that I forgot to add cornstarch to the apple mixture, and I doubled up on the salt. Oops. It's hard to keep everything straight when also juggling Roscoe! I'll blame it also on the fact that I had to double the crust recipe in my head, which just never works out anyway.

While the pie was baking, apple juices began to seep over the edge and pool at the bottom of the oven. This produced a lot of smoke, set off the fire alarms, and filled the house with the smell of burnt apples. Peterson said that if the pie was browning within the first hour of baking, to turn the heat from 375 to 300. My crust was browning fast, so I followed his instruction.

About halfway through baking, a girlfriend of mine came over to visit. With 20 minutes left on the timer we decided to take a short walk around the neighborhood. We moseyed around trying to be mindful of the time, but when we returned the buzzer had already gone off, and I have no idea how long past 1.5 hours the pie actually baked.

Either way, only the edges were a little dark. I took the pie out to cool, and planned to wait for after dinner to dig into it, but later decided that I had to taste it right then. The crust of my slice broke apart when I cut into it (which was kind of disappointing because I was looking forward to the presentation), but the apples were still nice and warm. The crust really was perfect though, like tender layers of of sweet bread. The top crust was crunchy and shiny from the egg white, while the bottom crust was soaked in sweet buttery apple goodness.


I don't think the salt impacted the pie in a bad way, although the cornstarch would have been an improvement. I do wish I had more time to focus on the art of constructing the crust of the pie. But there are many more pies in Peterson's book so I know I will get more practice. All but one quarter of the pie was gone by the next morning and I had to ask Andy to take what was left with him to work, because I definitely would have devoured it before noon.

Just like with applesauce, I think a pie made with two apple varieties makes for a more complex and tasty dessert. The tart McIntosh paired well with the sweeter Golden Delicious.