Whoops!

There are so many ways to screw up when making a pie. Add too much flour and the dough becomes too crumbly to work with. Work the dough too much and the crust will come out tough. If you forget to close the edges with egg white, the juice will come out from the wrong side. And if you forget to cut the steam vents and decide to do so after it's frozen, your pie will look like this:

Notice how the upper crust stayed perfectly dry? What happened was that steam was released to the sides of the pie instead of the top. The top was sealed despite cutting the steam vents on the frozen pie.

Fortunately, not all pies failed from this batch. I tried Kenji Lopez' technique again since last week didn't end up so well. Only the fresh non-frozen pie passed where the steam vents were cut at the appropriate time. It was baked at 425°F for the first fifteen minutes and then 375°F for the last fifteen.

The crust was more flaky but it may have been overworked a bit as evidenced by the south end of the edge. When I cut the south edge of the pie, it felt as if the pie was pulling itself together. Even though the edge was getting pretty dark, apples weren't fully cooked and you can see that there was not a lot of juice. The pie could have been cooked a little longer.

Like last week, I mixed the flour and butter together only this time, I pulsed it until it formed a paste.

I pulsed it to the point where the flour and butter wouldn't mix together (about 100 pulses) so I may overworked the dough at this point already. After adding the remaining flour, I pulsed it a few times and the dough looked crumbly. Water was slowly added while mixing the dough with a spatula in a bowl and it took a long time to form a ball!

According to the recipe, it shouldn't take long to form after adding water. I may have pulsed it too many times after adding flour to the flour/butter paste.

And now for the failed pies!

Baked frozen at 425°F for the first twenty minutes and then
375°F for the last twenty

Baked frozen at 400°F for forty minutes

Baked frozen at 425°F for the first twenty minutes and then
375°F for the last twenty. Rack was placed higher but the result was the same.

All of the pies from this batch had dark (almost burnt) edges. Since the crust is more flaky, it could be that the top thin layer was exposed more to heat. If the crust wasn't flaky, the gluten layers would be squished and the edges would not cook as fast.

I'm going to try this technique again for my next batch and see if I can make the crust without too many pulses. And of course, I'm going to make sure that the steam vents are cut before I put the pies in the freezer.

A little closer to what I want but not quite.

In search of the perfect crust recipe

Up until this week, I've made pies the traditional way. Kneading the dough by hand in a mixing bowl while gradually adding a tablespoon of water until it comes together. The best crust I've made to date for a 9-inch pie consists of:
-2 cups of all-purpose flour
-1 cup of cold butter (salted or unsalted)
-9.5 tbsp of ice cold water
-Egg white or an egg to close the edges

The dough isn't as flaky as I'd like to be but it was easy to work with. No cracks on the edge when I roll the dough, which I thought was a good thing. 9.5 tablespoons of water seems a lot but the crust was never soggy. Everyone that tried my pies never had any complaints about the crust. Some just didn't like the fillings.

I came across this site which explains about behaviors between the main ingredients for a pie crust. The key point from this article is that if you combine flour with butter without water, it'll form a paste which acts as fat. More flour is then added followed by water to form gluten layers. Fat creates the void space between gluten layers when baked. By having more void space, the pie has more flakiness. The recipe can be found here, however, I used a modified recipe as I generally prefer a lighter crust and I was making four apple pot pies instead of a 9-inch pie. The ratios are similar to the author's (Kenji Lopez) though:
-2 cups of all-purpose flour
-1 cup of cold unsalted butter
-1.5 tbsp of sugar
-3/4 tsp of salt
-5 tbsp of water
-1 egg for closing the edges

For the filling, I used:
-8 organic Gala apples
-1/2 cup of sugar
-1 tsp of cinnamon
-1/4 cup of all-purpose flour

And so begins my first time using a food processor, which I borrowed from a friend! I followed the same techniques as Kenji's, processing flour with butter without water. However, with the same number of pulses, it came out powdery rather than pasty.

After adding more flour and water to the mixture, I was able to form a ball with my hands, although I shouldn't be doing that as using my hands could melt the butter and thus, creating crust without void space. I left the dough in the fridge for a day before rolling it and this is how it came out.

Apples were prepared and added to the pot pans.

I froze three of them and baked one at 400°F for thirty minutes.

Not the best looking pie I've made to date but my biggest disappointment was the fact that the crust didn't come out flaky. It was a bit runny as well and the sides collapsed after pressing it.

I baked one of the frozen pies the following day only this time, it was set to 425°F for the first twenty minutes and then 375°F for the last twenty minutes.

You can see that this pie wasn't runny at all probably because the juice got absorbed by the thick crust. The crust was unintentionally thicker than the first pie particularly the upper crust (I still need to work on my rolling skills). The lower crust was thicker but not by much. The pie also came out nicer as the sides did not collapse.

The taste however, was very heavy on the crust. So heavy that it took some of the sweetness away. And again, the crust wasn't flaky; it was more crumbly.

The following night, I baked my third pie from the batch at 450°F for the first twenty minutes and then 375°F for the last twenty minutes.

The results are similar to my first pie but the rim and bottom crust are crispier which makes the pie darker. It was also very runny.

And finally, for my last pie of the week, I baked it at 425°F for the first twenty minutes and then 375°F for the last twenty minutes.

It came out pretty well. The crust was a little bit thicker but not as thick as my second one. Not too runny, the crust was able to hold most of the juice inside. Despite a thicker crust, the sweetness was still there. This is my favorite pie from this batch.

The fact that I wasn't able to achieve a flaky crust is because I wasn't able to get that flour and butter paste. It came out powdery instead, and as a result, the crust was crumbly. I was worried that the butter would melt when I mixed it with flour.

Despite not being able to get the perfect crust this week, there were a few things that we can learn from this:
- Baking at a higher temperature for the first half of the process will harden the crust. Temperature must be lowered in
- For a frozen apple pot pie, baking at 425°F for the first twenty minutes and then 375°F for the last twenty minutes seem to be the threshold before the pie goes runny.
- Thicker crust helps the pie retain the juice as well but very thick crust will take the sweetness away from the pie.

For my next batch, I'll keep pulsing the flour and butter mixture until it forms a paste whether the butter melts or not. Hopefully not.

And so it begins!

I woke up one weekend only to think about eating a slice of apple pie. That one flaky, buttery, sweet slice that I never had in my life. Is it really hard to make a perfect pie? Immediately, I searched on the Internet, hopped into my car, and bought all the ingredients and tools to make a pie. Five hours later, voila!

Not exactly what I envisioned that morning. The crust was rock solid and the filling was runny and very tart. I did eat the whole pie that week. I figured forcing myself to finish this atrocious beast will only make me want to make a better pie. And it did!

 

Crust was a little burnt as I decided to make it thinner. I also added more water to the crust to make it easier to roll. Filling was still runny but at least it was better than 'edible'. After several tries, it's finally looking more like my dream pie.

Since this last picture was taken, I've been focusing on individual pot pies. The challenge is to bake a frozen pie as it often goes runny. I use different apples now as well (Gala). More on this in the future!