Pie #3, Sort of

Well, I think I've been converted.  Anyone who would mess with the time and painstaking labor of a piecrust, when they could just (literally) throw together a galette dough, has obviously got too little to do.  Our friend Taylor, while visiting our little berry patch from San Francisco, showed me how to make a galette with some blue-, rasp-, and blackberries obtained from my local farmer's market.  He was inspired, he said, by a show he saw on the Food Network where famed chef Jacques Pepin made a galette in about thirty seconds flat.  I timed Taylor on his galette-- about 19 minutes, which is peanuts compared to any piecrust.  Watch, follow, and learn.

1. Put 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour in a bowl.  Put together a glass of ice water and set it to the side within reach.  Add a pinch of salt, and three big pinches of sugar.  Pour a little ice water on, and start kneading.  Add ice water as needed until the dough holds together.

2. Turn dough out onto a floured surface.  Roll out until you have a large, flattened piece of dough in, really, whatever shape you like.  Cut in half, and lay each piece next to its mate on a cookie sheet.

3. Mix your berries (I had three pints) with sugar-- a quarter cup, I'd say; less if your fruit is extra sweet.  Add a squeeze of lemon, and a tablespoon of tapioca if the juiciness is out of control, and mix 'em up.

4. Spoon half the berry mixture in a little heap onto one dough sheet, and repeat with the rest of the berries on the other dough.  Fold up the sides of the dough and make little pouches out of them.  You could probably make quite cute little purses, if you cared to.  Try and make sure there are no holes in the bottom so as to not lose any precious juices.

5. Bake at 425F for 25-30 minutes.

If you're going the fresh summer berry route and if you're taking the galettes camping with you as we did, you'd probably best pick up a can of whipped cream and douse them well before eating like a hog.

More Pie Talk

Adam's mom Mary sent me this article from the Washington Post this morning.  In it, a pastry pro gives a few lessons to a woeful pie baker.  The slide show is great, and all the tips are contained therein, so if you want the advice but don't want to read too much, I'd recommend that.  Thanks, Mary!

And one more thing.  I'm sure that cherry pie she made tastes amazing, but would anyone else agree that that lattice was not as outstanding as another cherry pie lattice featured recently on this blog?  Just asking.

The Next Veruca Salt

Ever since I wrote my last post, I've been obsessing about pie.  I've been trawling the internet for tips, and contemplating the few comments I've received after my call for help.  What I've found is that, basically there are as many "tried-and-true," "fail-safe" pie tips and methods as there are pie bakers out there.  

Some interesting ones:

-- Put a piece of aluminum foil or a cookie sheet directly under the pie or on the rack below so juice doesn't spill over into the bottom of the oven. 

--Mix a tablespoon or three of quick-cooking tapioca to thicken your pie juices and avoid pie soup.

--Saute hard peaches in a little water, maybe some sugar and lemon juice, before putting them in the pie.

-- Bake the pie on top of a pizza stone, or directly on the bottom of the oven for the first twenty minutes to ensure browning of the bottom crust.

--Roll out your crust between wax paper.

--Use half shortening, half butter (shortening for flakiness, butter for flavor).

--Decide what kind of pie you're going to make based on sales at the market.  In other words, don't get your heart set on blueberry pie, if it's going to cost you $16 for a pie's worth of blueberries.

Well, as I embark on my pie making adventure, I'll employ these tips and more, just to see if they are as imperative as some say they are.  I've got Pie #1 cooling on the stove right now-- a sixteen-dollar blueberry pie, if you want to know the truth-- and it looks gorgeous!  I'll get a photo up when Adam comes home with the camera. 

And I can verify one tip already: put foil or a pan underneath the pie while it bakes!!  I forgot that step and now I have blueberry tar on the bottom of my oven.  Great.