In anticipation of making an apple pie on Tuesday with Lila, I set out to pre-make the pie crust, based the recipe from the Joy of Vegan Baking.
Not only are there 2 pages of directions for good pie crust making, but I was pleased to find the chapter intro was a list of tips for making crusts.
I measured out all the ingredients into separate bowls and set them all in the freezer half an hour before I began (well, 45 minutes because I had to eat dinner, but that only meant the water had a little more ice)
The recipe called for mixing the non-dairy butter and vegetable shortening into the flour/dry ingredients in the food processor. I quickly determined that (Through persistent trial of following the letter of the instruction) that my Oster must be a smaller capacity than the food processor the author was working with, and I had to split the dry goods, cold butter, and shortening into roughly half to combine in two batches.
Next time I'll either measure out by a half at the get go, or find another way to mix these ingredients.
Once the ingredients were all mixed, I took my two batches of crests and made discs and wrapped them in plastic wrap to sit in my fridge (in a Ziploc bag) until Tuesday, when were make him the pie. The pieces weren’t the most cohesive, but I figured that would lend to the flay crust I was after.
March 30th: Apple Pie
Lila came over and I pulled out the two pie crusts from the plastic bag in the fridge. Putting down overlapping pieces of wax paper on the counter, with flower sprinkled on them and the rolling pin. I rolled out the larger of the two refrigerated balls of dough – Lila keeping the flour on the pin. I had a bowl of ice water at the ready to repair any tears, and had to take my best guess as to how much a 13" diameter was. Because of the crumbly nature of the crust, it was a little tricky to transfer to the dis. We eventually turned the pie pan upside down over the crust, and flipped both over, the extra flour from wax paper fell onto the counter.
We pressed the crust into place, then Lila rolled out the top crust, which held together less well than the larger one. We folded it in the wax paper and set it back in the fridge.
Using an apple corer, a vegetable peeler and a knife we prepared 5 apples: 2 tart granny smith and 2 juicier red delicious, for the pie.
The slicing and peeling took a lot longer than we thought. Lila juiced half a lemon to get the 1 TBSP fresh lemon juice the recipe called for. We used granulated brown sugar, and 2 /12 TBSP flour (the recipe called for between 2 and 3 TBSP) We ended up adding all the lemon juice Lila had made (almost double what the recipe called for – she is quite skilled with the juicer.)
The apple mix had to sit for a little – I may have to rearrange the order of the steps – prepare the filling, then roll out the pre-made crusts while it sits (stews).
Transferring the upper crust onto the pie was tricky, we tried flipping it from the wax paper, but a chunk fell off and we got it off center. We managed to move it into place and pinched the overflow of the bottom crust to fill the gaps.
We will definitely need practice making pie crusts and transferring them, but I think we managed okay for our first pie (perhaps , if we use overlapping wax paper, we can hold it above the pie, and pull the paper out from either side, once we have the crust down…)
We baked the pie in the middle rack, with a rack below it with an empty cookie sheet (to catch any filling spills – luckily there were none.) We baked it for 30 minutes, checked for doneness, then , because the apples inside weren’t soft enough yet, but the edges of the pie were already browning, Lila put pieces of foil over the edges, and we baked it for another 10 minutes.
Tasting the pie had to wait until the next day: it was 10 pm as we wrapped up, and the recipe called for 3 hours to cool.
We would do better, we think, if we pr-mix the cinnamon and sugar that get sprinkled on top of the pie, we'd have fewer spots of concentration of just one or the other. I found the pie to be a little bitter (though I was alone in this opinion). I think this was due to the extra lemon juice we added.
Given the trouble with the large crusts, we may also consider small, individual pies or tarts, or apple turnovers where we don have the transfer to the pie dish issue. All in all, I think we found a keeper, now we just need to find a nice vegan ice cream and serve it up a la mode.
New tools / ingredients: 9" round glass pie pan
Recipe used: The Joy of Vegan Baking
Co-baker: Lila
Date: March 28th and 30th
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