Pies and Lots of Dough

Baking pie is more fun (and a lot easier) that I imagined it would be! Above you will see the fruits of last night's labor with the lattice crusted apple cranberry pie, which was the perfect example of looks surpassing taste. The cranberries added such a beautiful color, but the flavor was crazy tart, and I should have added more sugar.

Our assignment for the end of this week is to create a pie (check) and 2 other pies/tarts, 1 savory (think quiche) and 1 sweet (think banana cream) using different dough methods. Here are the steps for making an apple pie.

1) Make a pate brisee dough and divide into a 10 oz portion for the bottom crust and a smaller portion (whatever is left over) for the top crust. Preheat oven to 450.

2) Roll out the 10 oz portion into a circle on a floured board and kind off roll the flattened crust around your rolling pin to place into your 9" pyrex pie pan. Rest the dough into the fold of the pie pan to make sure the sides of the pie have a defined edge. Then, trim the dough, leaving about 1/2 " to 1" of foldover.

3) Wash with egg, and set in the fridge while you are prepping your apples.

4) Peel, core and slice 4-5 apples of different varieties, coat with sugar, flour, and cinnamon (optional).

5) Take the dough out of the fridge and put the apples into the pie pan, piling them on, as they will fall a little bit.

6) Roll out the other piece of dough.

• To make a lattice crust, as pictured above, cut the rolled dough into strips of equal sides. Starting in the center, create a weave. Then crimp the sides.
  
• To make a full top crust, brush the inside with egg wash and place on top of the pie. You can affix the sides by crimping or using a fork. Most importantly though, you don't want to create more than 2 layers of dough on the edges or they won't cook. Cut steam slits in your pie or it will totally explode-NOT COOL!

Now onto the mishap. In an over ambitious moment, I decided to make my dough for Saturday and do a double batch so I would have time for a bonus item. HOWEVER, one batch of short dough yields 2 lbs of dough, and of course 2 batches means 4 lbs of dough. The average tart, with which short dough aka pate sablee is used, uses roughly 11 oz of dough. I had 4 lbs of dough, and 6 rounds to work with, which means I have a lot of bonus to do! OY!