An Apple Pie to Say Goodbye

Although I'll have to wake up for school in less than seven hours, I still can't believe that break is ending. I'm not ready for it to be over! As a last hurrah! for the holiday season, I spent my evening baking an apple pie with the help of Mark Bittman in How to Cook Everything.

To be perfectly transparent, baking this pie was very labor-intensive and intimidating for me. I've never made a pie before. The techniques used were all very new. Thankfully, though, my cookbook had lots of advice and tips to offer on just about every step. 

Prepared Ingredients

I started by gathering all of my ingredients, which mainly included apples, cinnamon, flour, and lots of butter. I felt silly measuring out my flour. This was because instead of scooping it in one scoop with my measuring cup, I tried a more time-consuming technique from my book. It said that "to measure flour accurately, use a spoon to overfill the measuring cup, then sweep the top evenly with the flat side of a knife" (Bittman 16). It took longer to do it this way, but I think that it helped my pie have a light texture. If I had scooped the flour normally, I would've compressed the flour and ended up with way more than I needed. I'll definitely be measuring flour the correct way from now on!

As I'm naming it, the "Spoon-and-Sweep"
dry-ingredient measuring method

After that, I followed the recipe's steps to make my pie crust. I cut butter into the flour using two knives, and moved on once the mixture resembled cornmeal as advised by my book (Bittman 928). This took a lot of arm work, so I was glad to know exactly when to stop. The book's cornmeal comparison for coarse crumbs was helpful to me, because I knew to keep going until the flour granules looked a bit thicker than usual. Without this, I would not have known what "coarse crumbs" really meant. I finished the crust by adding water and forming the dough into a ball with my hands. I let the dough chill in the freezer for half an hour. This led me to the part I dreaded-- rolling out the dough.

 I wouldn't have been
able to roll out this dough
without my cookbook

Over the holidays, I tried to rolled out sugar cookie dough. It felt impossible. The dough got stuck to my hands, the counter, and the rolling pin, no matter how much flour I sprinkled on everything. Thanks to my cookbook, the dough rolling for my pie was much easier! The book suggested (as I expected) for me to add flour when the dough became sticky. But, its key tip was that "if it continues to be sticky, and it's taking you more than a few minutes to roll it out, refrigerate or freeze again" (Bittman 929). This piece of advice saved me so much time, because as expected, my piecrust dough started sticking to the rolling surface. After I refroze it for a few minutes, it rolled very easily and I didn't even have to keep adding flour! This also made my piecrust more tender instead of tough, because I didn't have to overhandle it to flatten it out.



Finishing the pie was simple from there. I transferred my rolled out piecrust into the baking dish, and put it into the freezer. While letting it chill, I prepared the apple filling according to the book's recipe on page 931. Then I put the apple slices into the pie crust, arranging them so that the center of the pile was higher than at the sides, as recommended (Bittman 931). This helped my pie look a little bit neater, instead of being uneven or lumpy. The lower height of apple slices on the edges also made it easier for me to seal the top crust on.

An hour and four-hundred-fifty degrees later, my pie was complete! It baked perfectly, and it came out of the oven steamy and golden brown. There couldn't have been a better way to end break than eating a slice of this pie. I wouldn't have been able to bake a properly textured, delicious pie without Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. And, I'm glad to have learned some general baking techniques along the way. What are some of the most surprising little tips you've learned for successful baking? Leave a comment below! I'd love to hear some of them!