And so, it's Fall, at last. And what's Fall without apples, right? For days, I kept staring at all the excess apples I had in the kitchen bowl. It's time to make that pie.
I've struggled with finding the right apple pie recipe for a few years now. Not the filling, mind you....the crust. How to make a good apple pie crust has been the talk of cookbooks and bakers for many years. Search for "apple pie crust" and you get 74 million results and counting on Google. "The perfect apple pie crust" returns 26 million and counting. For this one I stuck with King Arthur Flour's basic pie dough found here: https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/classic-double-pie-crust-recipe
But some crucial questions remain:
Water or vodka or both?
Shortening, butter or lard?
Food processor or hands?
Preparing an apple pie is not as easy as it may seem. There are lots of apples in an apple pie (9 in this one). Which ones should you choose? I chose mostly Granny Smith.
And then there's the dough.
Shaping and rolling out the dough sounds easy as pie in the cookbooks but they wildly exaggerate. Someone should say "OK, now get ready to get messy with the dough. It will stick to your fingers, not comply with direction and crumble in places that will make you rethink making this. And of course, when the phone rings, learn how to use your nose to answer it. Better yet, don't answer it. And when you roll the dough out, don't worry that it doesn't look like watching the Pioneer Woman roll hers out on the Food Network. It's all good."
Indeed it is. Damn good.