This Pie Is Right

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

I finally made that pie I dreamed of. And it was better in real life.

It’s the pan. I know it’s the pan. I’ve baked dozens and dozens of pies and this is the first time I have ever inspected the crust and the word “perfect” left my lips in a whisper. It was evenly golden brown from the crusty fluted edge to the center of the bottom.

No dark spots, and no vaguely overbaked too-dark aftertaste. Also, no soggy part there in the middle because you took it out early worried that the edge would char.

And I did not shield it while it was in the oven — neither with one of those aluminum shields nor with foil. I didn’t need to because the stoneware pan baked the most fantastically even crust. I’m not going back. Not ever.

The photo above is of the first pumpkin pie in the Pampered Chef Stoneware Deep Dish Pie Plate in Cranberry. I made a second one this past Sunday when I had out-of-town guests stop over for dinner. It was as perfect as the first. Yes, I know that may be difficult to believe, but you’ll either have to trust me or get a hold of one of these pans and test it yourself. (If you need a PC consultant, I can refer you to mine. Just drop me a line.)

There has got to be a lot more pie now. Not only because I loved the fantastic results from the first two pumpkin pies. But also because baking pies this past week reminded me how easy it is to make something that improves my life by leaps and bounds.

I know there are people who fear pie baking because the crust makes them nervous. I think pie baking has a lot to do with confidence. And if you’re not confident from the start when you’ve made your first few pies, you need to keep baking more pies until you earn that confidence. It will come. And in the end you too will get fantastic results.

I’m fortunate to have learned pie baking at the elbow of two fine ladies – my maternal grandmother and my step-mother – and neither of them had any pie fear. Both made the crust by hand by cutting vegetable shortening into flour with a pastry blender or with a fork. Both got delicious results.

I’ve done it that way and I’m nostalgic about the method because it’s what I first learned. But, in my adulthood, I’ve been fortunate to receive a KitchenAid stand mixer as a gift and I recently have used it to blend the fat into the flour. It is very fast and thorough, which is especially good when you’ve got more on your to-do list today than “bake pie.”

My current pie pastry recipe contains all butter (plus flour, salt and water) and comes from Rosie’s Bakery All-Butter Fresh Cream Sugar-Packed No-Holds-Barred Baking Book by Judy Rosenberg (see the recipe on page 175 for Basic Pie Crust 1). I have also enjoyed using a crust based on vegetable oil, which I learned in my home economics class in the seventh grade. I think that there are lots of good crusts out there and I don’t think any are inherently better than others since taste and preferences are very personal.

But I tend to go back to the all-butter crust time and again because (1) it’s butter, and butter tastes better to me and (2) I have such excellent results rolling out this crust. I place the refrigerated disk of dough on waxed paper or plastic wrap, and I roll it out with my rolling pin using no additional flour. As long as it stays reasonably cold, it does not stick to the pin. If you need to work very slowly, just slide it gently back into the fridge when it starts to stick. Slide your hand under the waxed paper or plastic wrap and the gently turn it dough-side-down into the pie plate. Then gently peel away the paper or plastic and guide the dough to fill all corners of the plate. Fancy up the crust with your favorite design — I prefer crimping by hand.

For the pumpkin filling, I did a search through my recent favorite cookbooks. I did not want to trudge up to the store just to buy the evaporated milk that is an ingredient in many pumpkin pie recipes. Instead, I found a lovely alternative in From Amish and Mennonite Kitchens by Phyllis Pellman Good and Rachel Thomas Pellman.

Their recipe on page 212 contains the usual ingredients with the addition of one tablespoon flour (as a thickener, I think), one tablespoon molasses or King Syrup and one tablespoon of browned butter. Where they called for one half cup each of milk and cream, I substituted one cup of whole milk. I spiced it with ground ginger and cinnamon and left out the nutmeg because I’m running low and needed it for my secret ingredient in mashed potatoes.

This is a fantastic pumpkin custard — so delicious, soft and smooth. Once again, I’m not going back to the old way with the canned milk. I like this better. It is simpler because I often have milk in the fridge but have to buy evaporated milk just for pumpkin pie. What for? No reason, it turns out. It seems like lots of interesting things happen when I make do instead of buying ingredients just because they’re listed in a recipe.

I had been putting off pie baking for months, as I mentioned in my post about Pie Dreams, and as I slid the first pumpkin pie into the oven, I thought, shame on me! This was not some sort of difficult project to dread and delay. It was easy and fun. But I let myself get too busy and forget.

It’s amazing how finally doing something you’ve had on your mind opens the world up to you. I need to start baking pie all the time; weekly, at least, because I need to solidify my relationship with it. So I’m adding that to the cooking plan. My last pie was this past Sunday, so I need to get another one in by the end of the weekend. I’m going to go for the other dream pie: Amish-style oatmeal pie. Then we’ll see where the wind takes me.

Posted in change your mind, energy, attitudes, nostalgia, cooking, love, pampered chef, celebration, pie, dreams & dreaming, books, enthusiasms | 7 Comments »