Today is National Apple Pie Day in America. Of course, I'm baking an apple pie! For some time now, I've been collecting pie pans made of all sorts of materials: glass, metal, ceramic, aluminum... For today's holiday, I'm trying out my new pink pie pan for the first time.
There are numerous pie recipes, and I'm still experimenting. Today, for the pastry crust, I'm trying the All-American Double Crust recipe from Ken Haedrich's "Apple Pie Perfect":
- 3 cups flour
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 170 g cold butter
- 60g Crisco All-Vegetable Shortening
- 1/2 cup cold water
For a successful pie crust, it's crucial to use cold ingredients. It's best to grate the butter from the freezer over the flour. Don't overknead the dough, as it will warm up again. Chill the finished dough for at least an hour in the refrigerator before rolling it out. This ensures that the dough doesn't become hard, but is nice and flaky.
The apples for apple pie should be sweet and sour. You can use a mix of different apples for this. But today we're serving a pure Granny Smith pie. With an apple peeler, you can peel a variety of apples in no time and slice them into rings. The chopped apple pieces are tossed with lemon juice, cinnamon, brown sugar, Vanilla extract , nutmeg, apple pie spice and flour mixed and added to the dough bowl.
The apple pie is baked for 20 minutes at 210 degrees C. Then I place a pie crust shield on top and bake it for another 40 minutes at 160 degrees C. The aluminum crust shield ensures that the crust doesn't dry out or burn. After baking, let the pie stand for a while, then serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. Enjoy!
