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.