epic pie: our attempt at the world’s best apple pie EVER

Sophie received a visitation in the night from the pie fairy and was gifted with a dream of a gigantic apple pie.  What could we do after such a vision, but make said gigantic apple pie?  And seeing as how I had never made a pie crust by hand (not counting graham cracker crusts, which I love, and which are dead easy), I thought the timing might be right to give it a shot.  After copious internet research, and a trip to the market, we were ready.  The Sacred Order of Pie met to practice its number one sacrament: Pie Construction.

Butter Crust

There is a lot of talk about lard for flaky pastry, or hydrogenated palm kernel oil (otherwise known as “shortening”) for crumbly pastry (an aside: according to wikipedia, shortening is called shortening because “short” is a synonym for “crumbly”…which makes no sense, because have I ever said, while standing nose to nose with Paul, “You are kind of crumbly?” No.  No I have not.  But there you go.).  But there is no comparison, NONE, to straight up butter for flavor.  Plus, who wants to eat lard or hydrogenated anything?  So we knew from the start, we were making a butter crust.  No question.

The trick, it turns out, to using butter in a pie crust is to keep it super cold. Like, freeze the sticks and cut them into chunks of butter-ice before tossing them into the food processor.  Which we did.

For one pie crust (double, if, like us, you want a top crust) pulse together in your handy dandy cuisinart:

1 stick of butter (1/2 cup) chilled hard or frozen and cut into chunks

1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour (which, apparently, has the right protein content for the best pie crust)

1/4 teaspoon salt

A couple of hits is all it takes to get something that looks like coarse meal.  Turn this out into a bowl.

ONE TABLESPOON AT A TIME add up to 1/4 cup ice water.

Stir lightly with a rubber spatula.  You’re going for a ball of dough.  You stop adding water when it balls up.

But don’t forget the golden rule of pie making:  the more you work the dough, the tougher it gets.  So stir as little as necessary.  For two crusts (a top and a bottom) divide into two balls, flatten slightly (so they soften quicker) and wrap in plastic.

Now CHILL the dough for at least 30 minutes.

Or, if you’re like us, it’s several hours and when you go to get the dough disks out of the fridge, they are hard as rocks.  So you go off to take a bath or watch tv while you wait for butter colored rocks to turn back into dough.

Okay.  And I really wish I had taken some pictures for you all of us battling the dough, but we forgot.  Sorry.

Once it’s chilled, lay down some wax paper and plop one of your dough balls onto it, covering it with another layer of wax paper.  Roll from the center out, into a circle about 1/4 inch thick and a couple inches bigger than your pie pan.  Put your pie pan on the dough circle, upside down, then FLIP! and presto, your dough is in the pan.

Ain’t it purty?  And I feel I must mention that for some reason we decided to do all of this late at night, so the flash photos are kind of ugly.  We do what we must.  When the Goddess of Pie says you must make pie at 10pm, you obey.

Back into the fridge for that puppy to let the crust “relax.”  I swear, that’s what they call it.  Roll out the other dough ball and wrap it, still in its wax paper, around the rolling pin and re-chill.  Is this why we say, “Chill out, man,” as a synonym for “relax”?  Maybe I’ll ask wikipedia.

But not now because now it is time to peel and slice the apples!  6 giant Granny Smith apples, to be precise.

Or, as Sophie calls is, Fun With Knives!

I wonder if there was ever really a Granny Smith who had an apple tree that gave bright gree, tart, crisp apples?

Sprinkle a little lemon juice, maybe a teaspoon mixed with a little water, over your apples and give them a toss every now and then, to keep them fresh and bright.

Preheat your oven to 425.  Our oven takes a glacial age to preheat so we fire the beast up early.  You know your oven, maybe you don’t need to preheat yet.

All right.  Did I mention we are making Caramel Apple Pie?  Oh, yeah baby.

Caramel Sauce

Melt in a saucepan:

1 stick of butter

(And for those of you keeping score at home, that makes 3, yes THREE, sticks of butter in this pie, that’s what I’m talking about, uh huh.)

Add 3 tablespoons of flower and stir to make a paste.

Add 1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Add 2/3 cup brown sugar.  Keep stirring!  When it starts to get sticky, add

1/4 cup water.  If you like vanilla, add a splash now.

Boil, then reduce heat and simmer until you’ve got a nice caramel sauce.

Luc says, “Forget the apples.  Just give me that stuff.”

Assembling the pie

Back to the crust.  Get your re-chilled pie crust out of the fridge and fill it up with apples.

We kept piling them on until it was a ridiculous apple mountain.  Sophie says we should have taken a picture from the side so you could see how tall it was, probably five inches at least.  It was apple avalanche country, I’m telling you.

Next you pour on the caramel.

Then you get your top crust out of the fridge and drape it over the top and peel off the wax paper.  Pinch the edges together to seal it all up.  No caramel shall escape!  No juices shall overflow!  Pinch, pinch, pinch!

But you do need to vent the steam out, so cut a decorative pattern in the top of your crust using a sharp knife, or cookie cutters.  We used both.  You can also, apparently, paint the top crust with milk, or an egg/water mixture for better golden-brown coloring, and our finished pie was decidedly pale.  So, if you like your pie to be all gold, paint away.

Bake for 15 minutes at 425.  Then turn the heat down to 350 for another 35-45 minutes until the apples are soft.  A knife should go in and come out again with almost no resistance.

Ta Da!

If I could send the fragrance of this pie through the web to you, you would be salivating right now.

Waiting for the pie to cool enough to eat is the hardest part:

Eaten warm with vanilla ice cream and I promise immediate ascension into Pie Nirvana.  We were all moaning like idiots as we scarfed down a good third of this pie in one sitting.  It was fantastic.

Beware.  My internet sources say that this pie, cut into 8 slices, gives you over 500 calories per slice.  And about 30 grams of fat.  You have been warned.

Verdict

For appearance, I think it could use some work.  Our “fluting” around the edges was more like lumpy lumps, and the apples cooked down inside leaving a bit of a hollow place under the top crust.  On future pies, I’ll attempt to remedy these elements.

Crust to Apple Ratio: a bit too much crust per apple, I think, which required extra ice cream to balance the flavors, and given the already astonishing fat content of this pie, I’m thinking an open weave crust on the top, more thinly rolled, or even a crumble (though Sophie is dubious about a crumble), might be the answer in future pies.

Flavor: our Epic Pie was an unmitigated success on taste.  Our eyes were rolling back in our heads, no lie.  Five stars.  Hell, ten stars.

Sophie is already planning our next pie.

But I noticed Paul packed his gym bag today and I was feeling a tad, um, shall we say roly poly this morning.  So maybe we’ll have to give it, oh, a week at least, plus a three day fast in preparation for any further meetings of the Sacred Order of Pie.

Or I’m going to need bigger pants.

Any pie advice from all the Pie Masters out there?  Anyone try making this pie recipe?  Let me know!  Send pictures!