Pie and Pastry Bible (21 page)

PREPARING THE PAN

See page 50.

FOOD PROCESSOR METHOD

In a food processor with the metal blade, process the wafers and chocolate until the wafers become fine crumbs and the chocolate is finely grated.
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Melt the butter.
With the processor on, pour in the hot butter, processing for a few seconds or until it is fully incorporated. Add the cream and vanilla and pulse a few times until incorporated.

HAND METHOD

Place the chocolate wafers in a freezer bag and use a rolling pin to crush them into fine crumbs. Place them in a medium bowl. Finely grate the chocolate and combine it with the crumbs.

Melt the butter. Stir in the hot melted butter and toss to incorporate it well, so that it melts the chocolate and blends it into the wafer crumbs. Stir in the cream and vanilla.

FOR BOTH METHODS

Empty the mixture into the pie plate. Using your fingers or the back of a spoon, begin by pressing the mixture into the bottom of the pie pan and partway up the sides. To keep the crumbs from sticking to your fingers, it helps to place a piece of plastic wrap over the crumbs and press them through the wrap. Then switch to a flat-bottomed straight-sided measuring cup or glass to smooth the crumbs over the bottom and all the way up the sides. Be sure to press the bottom thoroughly so that the crumbs are evenly distributed.

To create an attractive top edge:
As you press the crumbs against the sides, they will rise above the rim. Use your left index finger to press against them from the other direction, forming a little ridge or peak. (Chilling the crust for a few minutes firms the butter and makes this task easier.)

Cover the crust with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to set the chocolate.

SERVING

The finished pie can be cut in the pan or slid out of the pan and onto a serving plate. Either way, it is necessary to loosen the crust from the pan. This can be accomplished by using a dish towel dipped in hot water and wrung well to wipe around the bottom and sides of the pie plate two or three times. Or, the pie plate can be dipped carefully into a pan of warm water. The butter on the outside of the crust will start to melt and the entire pie or individual slices will come out intact.

STORE

Refrigerated, up to 1 week; frozen, up to 6 months.

POINTERS FOR SUCCESS

Do not bake this crust, because the chocolate will lose flavor.

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The dough will be between 1/16 and
inch thick and rise to ¼ inch thick during baking.

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If you need to measure the crumbs after processing them, the chocolate can be added after the wafers are processed, but it must be processed until fine or it will not melt completely.

FRUIT PIES

There are two kinds of people: cake people and pie people. I love cake, but I am really partial to pie. I even love the word.
Pie
sounds so substantial and friendly—full of possibility. I particularly love the way Southerners pronounce it:
Paaah,
sort of like a sigh. And it appeals to my love of fresh tart/sweet fruit, bursting with juices, and the textural contrast of it in combination with a crisp, buttery crust.

My ideal fruit pie has a crisp bottom and top crust and a fresh juicy filling that is set enough to cut into slices that hold their shape but is still just the tiniest bit runny. As these three goals tend to be contradictory, I have, over the years, developed techniques to accomplish them.

I usually like fruit pies to contain just one variety of fruit, but seasonal mixtures are often splendid together, such as the classic combination of strawberry and rhubarb. Other more unusual combinations also make great pairings, such as apricots and raspberries, currants and raspberries, currants and cherries, and nectarines and raspberries.

I don’t generally like an entire pie of cooked berries because they are often too seedy and become bitter when cooked (the natural sugars break down and the bitter component is released). Uncooked berries, in contrast, require only about half the sugar. Certain combinations, however, such as currant/raspberry, can work to distract from the seed problem. Two effective techniques I discovered are to bind uncooked berries together with a glaze, as in the Glazed Strawberry Pie (page 102), and to cook only one quarter of the berries and leave the rest uncooked, such as in the Fresh Blueberry Pie (page 106).

To my taste, butter added to the filling dulls the flavor of the fruit (with the exception of apples), so I prefer to have the wonderful flavor of butter only in the crust.

Just about any flaky pie crust is suitable for a fruit pie, though I prefer the all-butter, part-cream cheese variety. As the cream cheese crust is the richest and most full flavored, I choose it to go with fillings that complement it with substantial texture and rich full flavor, such as apple. It’s fun to experiment with different combinations of crust and filling to see what excites your own taste.

Fruit pies are at their best the day of baking. The crust is most crisp and the texture of the filling at its most juicy with just a little desirable flow. Fruit pies are most delicious eaten slightly warm, but if they are hot, the filling will not hold together well, unless it is a very shallow layer as in the Open-Faced Apricot Pie (page 120). Most fruit pies are still excellent in flavor and texture on the second and third day after baking. I keep them at room temperature and cover only the exposed filling, so the crust does not become soggy.

I was not born a pie baker. In fact, in all my childhood I can remember only one homebaked pie, and it was made by my grandmother. She made an apple pie and I remember vividly telling her it was good and hearing her answer, “It wasn’t worth the trouble.” Maybe not for her, but I’m here to tell you that if you love to bake, and love to eat well, it is always worth the effort to make your own pie, because there is nothing like it. At the very least, you’ll never want for friends!

My own first apple pie was applesauce pie, and not because that was what I had intended. It was because I used my favorite eating apples: McIntosh. I envisioned a pie looking like those I had seen in photographs where the crust was highly domed and dimpled from the abundance of apple slices piled high within, so I peeled, cored, sliced, and mounded as many apples as would fit into the crust without sliding out, and carefully draped the top crust over them. The baked pie turned out beautifully golden and majestically high. I could hardly wait for it to cool to slice into it. But when I did, I was shocked and disappointed to see that the crust stood alone, towering above a thin layer of melted apples. Apparently, the apples stayed firm long enough for the crust to set and hold its shape and then the high moisture content of the apples (which makes them so delightfully juicy to eat raw) caused them to soften and dissolve. That was when I learned my first lesson about apple pie: Much depends on the type of apples, and a juicy apple like a McIntosh is not a good baking apple.

Years later, my husband, Elliott, and I bought a country house that had only three quarters of an acre of land, but on it resided a magnificent hundred-year-old Baldwin apple tree. We were warned by the previous owners that this old tree produced apples that were perfect for pies, but only every third year, and that when this third year arrived, the tree would produce so lavishly we would not know what to do with all the apples that would end up dropping from the tree and rotting, only to be crushed underfoot.

I waited anxiously for that third year of my apple tree’s season. I turned on the huge upright freezer in the basement weeks in advance in anticipation of filling it with unbaked apple pies. And the moment the apples started turning from solid green to a faint blush of pink, I made my second apple pie. The Baldwins kept
their shape beautifully, but they were sitting in a puddle of juices that soaked the bottom crust of the baked pie, despite the tapioca I had sprinkled on it before adding the apples. I considered adding more cornstarch to the filling but disliked the idea of corrupting the texture and flavor of the apples. That was when inspiration struck. Why not boil down and concentrate the juices! I had noticed that the apple slices had already begun to exude liquid while sitting with the sugar and spice mixture. I surmised correctly that concentrating this liquid would caramelize the sugars slightly and make the liquid syrupy, resulting in a baked filling that would be juicy but not runny. Since this discovery, I have found that this technique works not only for apples, it also is excellent for peaches and nectarines or any other juicy fruit, so now my fruit pies all have crisp bottom crusts. Another benefit to this technique is that because the juices are concentrated, only about half the usual amount of thickener is required, which results in a more pure and intense fruit flavor.

I went on to make twenty-four apple pies the season of our first Baldwin tree, some with Cheddar cheese in the crust, the rest with just a plain flaky butter crust, which in the end we all preferred. When I baked the first of these frozen pies, I discovered the third great secret:
Fruit pies baked from frozen have crisper bottom crusts!
This is because the bottom crust, which comes into direct contact with the hot pan, starts to bake before the fruit filling begins to defrost, giving the bottom crust extra time to become crisp. (The average pie, when baked frozen, requires about 30 minutes more baking time.)

Three years later, when the next bumper apple crop appeared, I went back into production, but time allowed only making six pies, so I offered baskets of apples as gifts. Then we found our dream house a few miles away, up in the mountains, surrounded by acres of hemlock, pine, and maple—but no apple trees. Now for my fall apple pies I buy local apples from the farm stands.

Three years after selling the old house, we decided to take a ride over to see if the new owners had changed the landscaping. As we drove by, we both gasped and cried out in unison, “The Baldwin apple tree!” The beloved old apple tree had disappeared. Not even a stump remained. I guess the new owners must have had enough of rotting apples underfoot. In any event, they sure couldn’t have been pie bakers.

QUANTITIES OF INGREDIENTS IN MY FRUIT PIES
FRUIT	PEAK SEASON	QUANTITY	SUGAR	CORNSTARCH	WEIGHT PER CUP
	*The fruit’s juices are concentrated, requiring less than the usual amount of thickener.
†Italian prune plum, September through early October.
apple	September through November	8 cups 32 ounces 907 grams	½ cup 3.5 ounces 100 grams	4 teaspoons*	4 ounces
apricot	June to early August	4 cups 22 ounces 624 grams	6 tablespoons 2.6 ounces 75 grams	2 tablespoons	5.5 ounces
blackberry	late July through August	4 cups 16 ounces 454 grams	½ cup 3.5 ounces 100 grams	2 tablespoons +1½ teaspoons	4 ounces
blueberry	June through August	4 cups 20 ounces 567 grams	½ cup 3.5 ounces 100 grams	2 tablespoons	5 ounces
cherry (sour)	late June to early July	3½ cups 20 ounces 567 grams	14 tablespoons 6 ounces 175 grams	2 tablespoons + 1½ teaspoons	5.75 ounces
Concord grape	September to October	4 cups 24 ounces 680 grams	14 tablespoons 6 ounces 175 grams	2 tablespoons + 1½ teaspoons	6 ounces
cranberry	October through December	3½ cups 12.25 ounces 347 grams	1¼ cups 8.75 ounces 250 grams	•	3.5 ounces
currant	July	3½ cups 19 ounces 540 grams	1 cups 9.25 ounces 266 grams	3 tablespoons	5.5 ounces
gooseberries	November through December, April to July	4 cups 21 ounces 600 grams	18 tablespoons 8 ounces 225 grams	2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons	5.25 ounces
peach	June through September	6 cups 34 ounces 964 grams	9 tablespoons 4 ounces 112 grams	4 teaspoons*	5.6 ounces
pear	August through February	5¾ cups 32 ounces 907 grams	6 tablespoons 2.6 ounces 75 grams	4 teaspoons*	5.5 ounces
plum	late June through August†	4 cups 24 ounces 680 grams	½ cup 3.5 ounces 100 grams	2 tablespoons	6 ounces
nectarine	July through August	8 cups 45 ounces 127.5 grams plus 1 cup/ 4 ounces/113 g raspberries	¾cup 5.25 grams 150 grams	2 tablespoons (5.3 teaspoons with just nectarines)	5.6 ounces
rhubarb	late winter through June	4 cups 16 ounces 454 grams	cup 4.5 ounces 132 grams	4 teaspoons cornstarch (or 2 eggs)	4 ounces