Apple Pie Extravaganza – a tutorial

I made four apple pies for Thanksgiving this year. You heard me right, FOUR! It may seem like a huge undertaking, but as long as there is considerable planning it can be a piece of cake…or pie!

Everything about the pie was homemade, except the apples. I didn’t grow those.

An unbaked apple pie ready to go in the oven!

I started two days before Thanksgiving making the pie dough and chopping the apples. Now pie dough has always frightened me, just like cheesecake and cinnamon rolls. OK, maybe frightened is too strong a word, let’s go for intimidation! My pie dough always came out too dry no matter what I added to it. When I rolled it out it would crack and fall apart as soon as I picked it up, it was discouraging!

Step 1: Combining flour, salt, and sugar in the food processor

Step 2: Chopped up COLD butter ready to be combined

Step 3: COLD shortening and COLD butter (sense a theme here?) ready to be combined with the flour

Step 4: Mixture will resemble cottage cheese and there should be no uncoated flour

Step 5: Add more flour and combine

Step 6: Turned out into a bowl and moisture added, it looks wet and sticky…almost too wet for pie dough…but wait!

Step 7: Wrapped in plastic wrap ready to be placed in fridge for a couple days

Step 8: The flour has soaked most of that wet goo, now it is a moist, supple pie dough ready to be rolled out! More on rolling dough later

But now the dough is perfect! It’s a matter of finding a good recipe, understanding your climate (if it tends to be dry or humid) and having a bit of patience. I will always have frozen pie dough ready to go in the freezer just in case. I think this is probably the 10th time I’ve made pie dough from scratch…so be patient, it will work!

My next step was to start chopping apples. And boy, I had a lot of apples to chop. 14lbs of apples were waiting for me in the livingroom in front of a nice movie!

They won't look like that for long!

I think it took me about 3 hours to chop all those apples. I was making two different pies and two of them required chopped apples while the other two required sliced. There may or may not be a slice of a thumb included in there somewhere.

The day before Thanksgiving was assembly and baking. I drained the apples from my water and Fruit Fresh (found in the canning section) combination. Fruit fresh helps keep apples from turning brown without adding additional flavor, like lemon juice sometimes does.

I do recommend using deep dish pie dishes

All those apples will let go of their juices once they get cooked. I found (from experience) that deep dish pie dishes are essential. I may toss the apples in some flour next time, but there is still going to be a lot of juice.

Oh, Crisco, my friend and enemy. My one and only "frienemy"

I used to hate Crisco…I still do. I’ve learned, however, that it can save my pie dough and I’ve come to embrace that. Not only do I use it in the pie dough, but on the counter as I’m rolling it out. I will rub some Crisco on the counter and sprinkle with flour and I haven’t had a single problem with pie dough sticking to the counter.

Look at this, isn't it the most beautiful thing you've ever seen!!

Now look at this! It’s rolled out, minimal cracking, I can lift it without tearing, and it’s going to turn out nice and flaky because of the cold butter and shortening. If cold butter is integrated into dough then as it melts in the oven it will create pockets of steam, which promotes nice and flaky dough.

Place the rolling pin on the dough and gently lift one side and drape it over the pin...

Then gently drape the other side and pick up

This may take some practice, and people develop their own technique for transferring dough from the counter to the dish. But hey, it works for me!

You can see some tearing, but no biggie!

There is some tearing around the edges and it is still delicate but I consider this a huge success! The tearing around the edges isn’t a big deal because I’ll be placing more pie dough over the apples and then I’ll fold the edges over.

I guessed as to where the middle was, keep the cutouts and place them on top of the pie

Apples are ready!

My only regret...not getting a photo of the finished pies

Regretfully I did not take any photos of the delicious golden brown apple pies. They got demolished so quickly that I didn’t to eat any. Though ironically I won’t eat a lot of my own baked goods, not sure why. It’s a tremendous compliment that everyone seemed to love my pie and I’m sure I’ll be making 6 next year!

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Tags: apple, apple pie, baking, pie, pie dough, recipe, thanksgiving pie