Dutch Apple Pie

This was my first try at an apple pie. 

It was, as so often happens, nearly a complete disaster, and imperfect in many ways. (Rest assured that I'll tell you all about them). Yet: it was also a success, insofar as deliciousness goes. Yum. Pie is good even when it's bad. 

As a pie seeker, I quest for piefection. But in the meantime, this stuff still tastes tasty.

First, the recipe, from Cook's Illustrated's invaluable Baking Illustrated book. (A great investment if you're interested in baking at all. I've been having great success with one of their bread recipes lately, and have made many friends via their cookies recipes).

Note that, as usual, I substituted my own pie dough. Those of you who've been following my pie odyssey will not be surprised that I used Carolyn's pie crust recipe.

Dutch Apple Pie

recipe adapted from Cooks Illustrated (and shamelessly copied here, from http://joelens.blogspot.com/2010/11/dutch-apple-pie.html, who seems to have modified it a bit- I've modified it back slightly, to be as close as possible to what I made)

1 pie dough (Carolyn's recipe)

Filling:

5 medium Granny Smith apples (about 2.5 lbs)

4 medium McIntosh apples (about 2 lbs)

3/4 cup golden raisins

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup heavy cream

Streusel:

1 1/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour

1/3 cup packed light brown sugar

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon cornmeal

7 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Remove dough-lined pie plate from refrigerator or freezer and press doubled 12-inch piece heavy-duty foil inside pie shell and fold edges of foil to shield fluted edge; distribute 2 cups ceramic or metal pie weights over foil. Bake, leaving foil and weights in place until dough looks dry and is light in color, 20 to 25 minutes. Carefully remove foil and weights by gathering corners of foil and pulling up and out. Continue to bake until pie shell is golden brown, 10 to 15 minutes longer. Remove from oven.

For the apple filling: Peel, quarter, and core apples; slice each quarter crosswise into pieces 1/4-inch thick. Toss apples, sugar, cinnamon, and salt in large bowl to combine. Heat butter in large Dutch oven over high heat until foaming subsides; add apples and toss to coat. Reduce heat to medium-high and cook, covered, stirring occasionally, until apples are softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in raisins; cook, covered, stirring occasionally, until Granny Smith apple slices are tender and McIntosh apple slices are softened and beginning to break down, about 5 minutes longer. 

Set large colander over large bowl; transfer cooked apples to colander. Shake colander and toss apples to drain off as much juice as possible. Bring drained juice and cream to boil in now-empty Dutch oven over high heat; cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened and wooden spoon leaves trail in mixture, about 5 minutes. Transfer apples to prebaked pie shell; pour reduced juice mixture over and smooth with rubber spatula.

For the streusel topping: Combine flour, sugars, and cornmeal in medium bowl; drizzle with melted butter and toss with fork until evenly moistened and mixture forms many large chunks with pea-sized pieces mixed throughout. Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and spread streusel in even layer on baking sheet. Bake streusel until golden brown, about 5 minutes; cool baking sheet with streusel on wire rack until cool enough to handle, about 5 minutes. Sprinkle streusel evenly over pie filling. Set pie plate on now-empty baking sheet and bake until streusel topping is deep golden brown, about 10 minutes. Cool on wire rack and serve. 

So, you may be wondering, what went wrong?

First of all, I will say right out front: apple pie is a lot of work. Just peeling, coring and chopping the apples took at least three-quarters of an hour. For some reason this came as a surprise. It's meditative work, and pleasant, unless you're in a hurry because you start late and want to feed people pie. If there's one lesson I need to learn (and there are probably several), it's that pies work better when you're not in a hurry.

Second of all, this recipe has got to be intended for a larger pie pan than 9", because I wound up with double the required filling, even after piling the apples up ridiculously high (as you can see from the photos). Nothing in the original recipe indicates this though. 

Third, I discovered why pie weights are necessary when pre-baking. Because my beautiful pie crust, which had been shaped carefully, then frozen (as recommended by pretty much everyone) to harden its lovely crenellated sides and prepare it to get crisp and flaky in the oven, immediately melted instead into a droopy puddle of shapeless dough in the middle of the pie plate. It was worse than the Nazis in the first Indiana Jones movie. Total meltmania. Which meant that mid-pre-bake I had to pull the pan out and attack the half-baked, half-goopy pie dough vigorously with the back of a spoon, to try to pull it back up the sides so that it could contain the filling. Once re-shaped, foil-covered, and weighted (I used a large quantity of pinto beans, full up the sides), it behaved just fine. But by that time it was pretty hideous-looking, if surprisingly structurally sound. I wish I had before and after pictures to show just how depressing this was. (When I re-read the preface to the pie crust section in the baking book, I discovered to my chagrin that they talk about using pie weights to support the sides, for just this reason. I'd always thought it was just to keep the bottom from bubbling, which didn't seem like much of a threat). I'd intended this to be my first really beautiful crust of the autumn. It was, instead, really really ugly. Because I didn't read the recipes closely enough, and thought I could skip a step. Lesson learned.

Fourth: the recipe calls for draining the apples, then cooking the juice with cream until it's thick. I found that this stuff didn't thicken nearly enough (though I cooked it longer than called for), which meant that my finished pie had a layer of gooey slime inside. Not optimal. 

Fifth: the recipe does specify using a Dutch oven to cook the apples. Since I don't have one, I used a large frying pan, which gave me some trouble because it was so full of apples that I couldn't get them all evenly heated. Ultimately I think the apples weren't nearly cooked enough, despite being on the stove for a very long time. 

Lastly: the streusel topping. I had trouble getting this to gel properly. Perhaps I needed more butter. The ingredients, as specified, wound up seeming like not quite the correct ratio. Which is why my pie looks like it's covered in sand instead of streusel.

All that aside, this was still delicious. This is the magic of pie. You can screw everything up, and people will still be very happy that they're eating it. (It's possible that taste-testers Leta, Lawrence and Amber were just being polite, but Suzanne tells it like it is, and she didn't spit it on the floor either).

Here's what a slice looked like:

And, one more overhead photo:

Someone else who seems to have conquered this recipe successfully, which might be useful if anyone wants to make this the right way:
http://megan-deliciousdishings.blogspot.com/2009/10/dutch-apple-pie-almost.html


I just bought a great-looking book, called Pie. ($10 at Powell's. How could I resist?) It has a whole chapter on apple pie. So expect more apple pie in the near future.