CRUST

This recipe makes enough pastry for one crust, but I always make enough for three crusts. I like this amount when actually making only two crusts (bottom and lattice top), as the extra makes it easier to work with and avoid tearing the dough. So, triple it, and freeze leftover scraps for another day’s pie.

Regarding fat, butter has good flavor and color, and it’s easy to remember “1 stick of butter to 1 cup flour.” Some people say shortening gives better texture than butter. For centuries, lard was the choice. I personally like the idea of butter best so that’s all I use. Someday, I’ll try lard, for a lark (or four-and-twenty blackbirds).

Critical:

1 cup or so of flour
1/3 to ½ cup of butter, shortening, lard, or any mixture of the three
¼ cup or so of water

Optional:

1/3 teaspoon or less salt (improves consistency and intensifies flavors, and most wouldn’t consider salt actually optional)
¼ teaspoon baking powder (makes it lighter)
1 teaspoon or so sugar (makes it sweeter)
1 small egg yoke (or a tiny small egg) mixed into the water first (improves color and texture). For my three crusts, I use a whole large egg. Note that if you add an egg, you need less water, so measure your total liquid based on the “water” proportion above.

Mix it until the consistency is like damp sand for a castle. Roll it flat, and put it in a pie dish. All done!

Some improvements to the method, to try as you like:

• First mix dry ingredients, then fat, then liquid. The less you handle and process the complete mixture, the better the texture will be. Just mix everything up; you want it slightly crumbly, not gooey, but all pretty much the same color. Use a food processor, a pastry knife, or two knives to cut the butter into the dry ingredients.
• Keep it cold, particularly if you use butter. More deranged members of the Pie Police refrigerate all ingredients and utensils to achieve maximum coldness. (Do you want to be like that?)
• If the mixture is crumbs of uneven size, the result will be a flakier crust. So, don’t overdo the mixing. It’s better (though messier, harder work, and more time consuming) to use your fingers to press the fat into the dry ingredients. I only do this when expecting the Queen of England, however. Hold your fingers in the freezer for a few hours, first, to keep them cold. (Kidding!)
• Dump in half a cup or so of liquid, mix it, and then add the rest more slowly, bit by bit. Consider dribbling it over the whole area of dried ingredients rather than making a deep puddle. Stop adding/mixing when it looks like the correct consistency, not when you run out of liquid in your measuring cup. The precise amount of liquid needed will depend on a number of factors. But you know what? Baking it will dry it out, so all is not lost if you get the amount/consistency slightly wrong, and it will taste fine even if it is rock hard.
• After it’s mixed, make it into two half-inch flat round pancakes, wrap them individually in plastic wrap, and refrigerate them for a while. Or freeze them for an even longer while. Months, even! You could roll the pastry and fit it to the pie plate and then refrigerate that, if you like.
• For wet, soupy fillings, such as peaches in a glaze or cream pies, prebake the shell. Line it with aluminum foil and use pie weights or dried beans on it to keep it flat, and bake it at 350 for about 15 minutes. This isn’t necessary for just fruit.
• Butter the pie plate to keep the pie from sticking.
• Whenever you have a spare few minutes, make some pie pastry and pop it in the freezer (two frozen discs). Always have a frozen pastry so that you can you can easily make a pie on a whim. Let it thaw for an hour before you roll it.
• Repair any cracks by using a little water on both edges, patted on with your fingertips. Cut the excess pastry from the edge of the pie plate, and freeze anything left over.

That’s enough tips. Take them or leave them. If your crust isn’t flaky, your pie will still probably taste fine. It’s hard to ruin a fruit filling.

FILLING

Critical:

2½ to 5 cups fruit or berries—whatever is in season at your local orchard. I personally use 4 cups most of the time.

Optional:

2 tablespoons to ½ cup flour (depending on wetness of ingredients) to make it thick
Sugar (white or brown) or honey to taste. 2 tablespoons to ½ cup is about right.
A couple tablespoons lemon or lime juice to intensify the flavors
Pea-sized dots of butter sprinkled over the top
Cornstarch (say, 5 tablespoons) instead of flour as a thickener. Tapioca and arrowroot also have their proponents.
Vanilla
Spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, etc., if you must, but these are really unnecessary and overdone. They mask the natural flavors of the fruit, which is really what the pie is all about. The Shakers often used rose water in apple pie, which brings out the flavor of the apples.

Mix it all up in a bowl and dump it into the bottom pastry lining your pie plate. Bake it until it looks like pie.

What, again, you want more direction? Sheesh, maybe you should buy a fussy cookbook. But I’ll tell you.

• You don’t need to peel your fruit. I actually find the flavor and texture more interesting with the peels intact, and peeling fruit adds so much time to the process.
• Brush the top pastry with milk or an egg white. This will make it bake to a nice brown color. If you don’t have a pastry brush, just use a crumpled up paper towel or even your fingers. Sprinkle sugar on top. Brush off any excess flour, first.
• If you cover your pie, put four or so little holes in the center to let the steam escape. Seal the edges by wetting both the bottom and top.
• People are ridiculously impressed by lattice tops. Cut (circular pizza or pastry wheels work best, but any knife is fine) 1-inch strips of pastry and run five lines in one direction and three (or five) in the other. For argument’s sake, say five by three. First, set the five vertical strips. Bend strips 2 and 4 back over, to add the central horizontal across verticals 1, 3, and 5. Bend back 2 and 4 to be fully extended. Then bend 1, 3, and 5 to set the high horizontal. Replace them. Then do the same for the lower horizontal. It’s no big deal. I recently saw an article in the Boston Globe that recommended using a ruler to make certain that your strips are the exact same width. Fortunately, newspapers are recyclable.
• Taste your filling while adding sugar or honey to get the proportions right. Don’t trust recipes for these proportions, as they don’t know how sweet your fruit is or what your personal preferences are. Most recipes are unnecessarily sweet. If you must follow someone else’s recipe, expect it to be too sweet.
• Combine fruits. Try apples and cranberries, apples and pears, blueberries and grapes, or whatever. Dried cranberries improve pretty much every recipe, including pie. While I personally prefer just one type of fruit, for me cooking often coincides with cleaning out the refrigerator, so combination pies can serve multiple purposes..
• Bake it at 450 degrees for 20 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 375 for another 20 minutes. Let it cool for two hours. Or, just bake the pie at 350 for about 45 minutes, without fussing, and eat it as soon as you like. Sometimes it takes a bit longer to bake. Peek often, particularly after the first half hour, as you don’t really want to be so methodical in your ingredients that you can accurately predict baking time in advance. It’s done when the filling is bubbling and the crust is light brown.

Ideally, you should make pie without using a recipe. Save the world by visiting your local orchard at least every couple weeks. Buy or pick whatever is in season, and make pie, pie, pie! After all, what better adventure could you give a Saturday guest than to pick apples/blueberries/pears/peaches at a local orchard, then immediately turn them into a pie? It’s more fun if it is easy and fast, so the pie-making habit is one that I strongly recommend everyone develop—and even perfect.