The Baking Answer Book (36 page)

For a
braided edge
, roll the dough scraps into three long, thin ropes and braid them together. Brush some beaten egg white onto the edge of the shell and arrange the braid along the edge, trimming where the ends meet. Brush the braid with more egg white.

Q
My pie and tart crusts always shrink during baking. What can I do to prevent this?

A
Make sure that when you fit the dough into the pan you are not stretching it to the edges. If you are, it will shrink back to its original size once it begins to bake. Crusts that require blind baking (baking without a filling) will shrink if not baked with pie weights. Freezing your unfilled pie and tart shells for 30 minutes before blind baking will further prevent shrinkage.

Q
What is the best type of apple for apple pie?

A
Apple-pie fruit must hold its shape when baked, since part of the pleasure of eating an apple pie is in the toothsomeness of the fruit. Choose from the following list of apples that stay firm in the oven, depending on whether you prefer sweet or tart fruit and local and seasonal availability. Feel free to blend apples from either or both lists to come up with your ideal sweet-tart apple pie.

Sweet baking apples
: Golden Delicious, Braeburn, Fuji, Mutsu, Rome

Tart baking apples
: Granny Smith, Empire, Cortland, Macoun, Newton Pippin, Northern Spy, Idared

Sweet-tart baking apples
: Macintosh, Jonathan, Jonagold, Honeycrisp

Q
When I make an apple pie, I fill my pie pan to the brim with apples, but they shrink in the oven, leaving a large space between the filling and the top crust, making the pie difficult to slice. Any suggestions?

A
Try filling your pie shell with a precooked apple filling. If you cook your apples (and cool them, of course — hot apples will ruin your chilled piecrust), you’ll preshrink them, so they’ll stay the same size as they were when you placed them in the shell, with the top crust resting against them.

Precooked Apple Pie Filling

The following recipe makes enough apple filling for a 9-inch pie, and it won’t shrink during baking.

5 pounds (10 to 12) baking apples of your choice (see
page 258
), peeled, cored, and cut into ½-inch chunks

¾ cup sugar

teaspoon ground cinnamon

1.
Melt the butter over medium heat in a large pot. Add the apples, sugar, and cinnamon, and cook, stirring frequently, until the apples are cooked through but are still holding their shape, about 15 minutes.

2.
Use a slotted spoon to transfer the apples to a baking sheet. The apple pieces should be liberally coated with juice, but leave any extra juices in the pot to prevent your pie from becoming soggy. Spread them out in a single layer and let stand until they are cool. When they are cool, the apples can be covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated for up to 3 days.

3.
Toss the cooled apples with the lemon juice before arranging them inside your pie shell.

Q
Can I replace the top crust of any fruit pie with a lattice top? What is the best way to weave a lattice?

A
Any fruit pie can be topped with a lattice. How tightly you weave it will depend on the fruit. Apples, which tend to dry out when exposed to the hot air of the oven, require a tightly woven lattice with just a little space between pastry strips to allow for some steam to escape but also to cover the fruit and keep it moist. Blueberries, cherries, peaches, and other very moist fruits benefit from a loose lattice with lots of exposed surface area for evaporating liquid.

Instead of weaving the strips directly on top of the pie, I prefer to cut long strips (about 13 inches long) and then weave them on top of a cardboard cake circle set on a baking sheet. When the lattice is woven, I place the baking sheet in the freezer for 15 minutes to allow the lattice to firm up. Then I slide it from the cake circle onto the pie, adjusting any strips that may have shifted during the transfer and trimming and crimping the ends into the pie’s edge.

Q
Are the vents cut into the top crust of a fruit pie decorative, or do they serve another purpose?

A
Vents serve a very important purpose, providing an escape route for the steam produced by the baking fruit. Without them, steam would be trapped inside the pie, causing both the top and bottom crusts to become soggy as the pie cooled. For less watery fruit, such as apples and pears, only three or four vents are necessary. For very juicy pies, like blueberry or strawberry, cut six to eight vents to allow enough steam to escape.

Q
Are thickeners like cornstarch and tapioca interchangeable in fruit pies? Are they always necessary?

A
Without a thickener of some kind, the fruit and fruit juices in a pie won’t gel and your pie becomes a watery mess. With them, the flavorful juices become semisolid and add flavor to the pie instead of running off the plate. So yes, I would always use a thickener in a fruit pie, as well as in most cobblers and crisps. The type and amount varies depending on the recipe.

Cornstarch, tapioca, and flour are the most popular fruit pie thickeners. (There are other options: Some people swear by Clear-Jel, a modified cornstarch favored by commercial bakers and available at most supermarkets; when baking for Passover, many people use potato starch.) When baking fruit pies, I stay away from flour, which can get lumpy if the protein in it forms gluten. Cornstarch and tapioca, in contrast, thicken without lumps because they are both pure starches without any gluten-forming proteins. Juices thickened with
both cornstarch and tapioca become satiny and smooth, an appealing combination.

Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Tapioca, a starch derived from the root of the yucca plant, is flavorless and gives fruit and fruit juices a glossy shine. But it is not the best choice for lattice-top and other open-top fruit pies because any small granules directly exposed to the heat of the oven will become hard and tough instead of dissolving into the fruit as it cooks. If you’d like to make a tapioca-thickened lattice-top pie, use tapioca starch, a fine powder made of ground tapioca granules, instead of pearl tapioca. Or grind pearl tapioca to a fine dust in a spice grinder before mixing it with the fruit to prevent this from happening.

Cornstarch gives fruit a satiny, less shiny gloss than tapioca. It won’t clump up and dry out when exposed to hot air, as tapioca will, so it is the natural choice for open-top baked fruit desserts. It can, in large quantities or when not cooked sufficiently, lend a slightly starchy taste to fruit fillings. And it won’t work as well to thicken highly acidic fruits such as cranberries, plums, and cherries.