apple pie

Birthday Pie for George

/ Susie / Leave a comment

I’m very happy with my pie crust, which combines the ingredients of the New York Times All-Butter Pie Crust with Joanne Chang’s Pâte Brisée technique. Her technique has an important step called “fraisage”, which she describes well in the Atlantic article linked above (she doesn’t use the word in the article, but she does in her cookbooks; it’s the step where you smear the shaggy dough on the counter). Here’s a 15-year-old video in which she very clearly explains and demonstrates the technique. It’s basically fool-proof. I love that the flavor is buttery, and that it has the flakiness of a shortening crust (but without the shortening).

I had the great privilege of baking this apple pie for George’s 94th birthday. George is a wonderful person, and the dad of my dear friend Teresa. What an honor to be part of this auspicious occasion with these people whom I love dearly.

Thanksgiving 2021

/ Susie / Leave a comment

I’m sad that I forgot to take photos, but here’s what I baked for Thanksgiving:

  • I made really terrible sourdough rolls. We ate them, and they didn’t taste terrible, but they really were a colossal failure. The primary issue was that I didn’t leave myself enough time, combined with my inexperience and ignorance about turning my usual Tartine sourdough recipe into rolls. The result was that the rolls looked OK, but inside were horribly dense and heavy. I mean, they had the density of bowling balls. I’d like to give this another go and see if I can make this work. This was definitely an example of my being unjustifiably cocky about what I can do with sourdough. I’m really still just a noob, and was robustly reminded of that with these rolls.
  • I made my classic apple pie, but this time I pre-cooked the apples on the stovetop. I think this helped with my usual problem of ending up with a gap between the apples and the top crust, but I changed another variable that also helped: I made a lattice crust rather than a solid crust. So, not enough data, but at least I didn’t have the gap.
  • I made the Joanne Chang Rich Chocolate Cream Pie, and it was great. Following the instruction to chill before blind baking the crust seemed to really forestall any “slumping”. I did fill the thing up with foil and pie beads, and will continue to, but the dough seemed quite sturdy this time.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving in Wisconsin

/ Susie / Leave a comment

For complicated reasons, I drove out to Wisconsin and spent several weeks with mom, Jennifer, Michael, and Mac, despite Wisconsin being in a covid surge at that time. It was meaningful to be there with them, and I spent much of my time there sewing and baking. Here are the two pies I made: my classic apple pie and Joanne Chang’s Rich Chocolate Cream Pie.

A few thoughts on these pies:

  • I have a consistent issue with my apple pies where the level of the apples sinks after the top crust has set, causing a big gap between the fruit and the top crust. You can see that in the photo. Even with macerating the apples in sugar for 30 minutes, it’s not enough to solve this issue. Next attempt will probably involve pre-cooking the apples.
  • I am very happy with my pie crust recipe, and keep returning to it despite trying several other recipes and techniques. The basic idea is that I use the New York Times all-butter crust recipe, but I use Joanne Chang’s “fraisage” technique. I did have success using Shirley Corriher’s technique of using a rolling pin to do the fraisage, but that method caused a tremendous mess in my kitchen, so I now stick with the regular fraisage by hand.
  • I seem to have been willing to make a fancy edge on the chocolate pie, perhaps because I didn’t have a fluted tart shell? I always follow the stated pâte sucrée recipe for this chocolate pie, and love it. It also appears that I made chocolate crumbs rather than curls!
  • It’s probably worth fessing up that I once made this pie and forgot to put the egg yolks and sugar into the chocolate custard filling. The resulting pudding/ganache (rather than custard) was still delicious (and one or two people preferred it!), so I now routinely cut back the number of yolks to 2 (from 4) and the sugar to 2 Tbs (from 1/3 cup). I do keep forgetting to bump up the cream and chocolate a bit to compensate for the loss in volume, but it’s not a big deal.