Pie O My (Remember? From the Sopranos)

Ok, so it's pie season.  As Adam and I prepare to move to Hood River for his new spiffy job (yay, Hood River!  yay, job!) I started to get creative with ideas for my own income.  The idea that I liked the most, until I made the world's WORST peach pie the other night, was to start a little baking operation.  Nothing huge, you know, just a few pies every week to sell to local coffee shops, maybe restaurants, and even if I just broke even or made enough for a six-pack of a weekend, that would be great.

Little did I factor into my calculations that you actually have to know how to bake first.  Good lord, when did baking become so difficult?  It used to be, back in my grandma's day, you just whipped up a pie with crust from scratch of course, threw it in the oven, and then let it cool idyllically on the window sill.  

Ha ha.  

So where did our grandmothers learn this hardwon  art?  I suppose from their grandmothers and mothers.  Not that I can blame my own mom-- I could have asked for some guidance, and if I had, I'm sure she would have taken the time out of her schedule running a marketing and design firm to show me.  But I didn't, and though I get occasional tips from my grandma, I'm afraid I'm turning into an old dog whose capacity for new tricks is on the wane.

I've made probably ten pies in my lifetime.  Maybe nine.  Or eight.  They've ranged from pretty good to abysmal.  The abysmal one was the most recent, and though it was an embarrassment from which I'm still recovering, I think it was the slap in the face that I needed.  I need help.  I'm sure that I can justifiably distribute blame-- my oven sucks for one, leaving the top crust nearly burned and the bottom crust completely raw; and my peaches really were no good-- dry and mealy.  But the thing is, good bakers work around these obstacles.  In the face of adversity, they flourish.  They mask dry, gross fruit and they do something to the crust-- I don't even know what-- to make sure it's not two-toned charred and raw at the same time.  

So here's my proclamation.  I vow, here and now, to make ten pies this summer.  (Whoa, I got butterflies in my stomach, just writing that.  This is a huge commitment!)  But I'm sticking to my rolling pins here.  Ten pies.  If, by the tenth pie I do not succeed in baking something decent, then I'm going to give up the practice forever.  Before I get started, do you have any tips?  If you pie bakers out there could single out the most important thing to remember when baking a pie, what would it be?  And hey, if it's all a bust, well, at least my oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are winners.