I have spent much of my adult life talking about what a shitty baker I am. I always felt that bakers had a wooden spoon up their asses. They had to measure everything perfectly, weigh everything on a scale, and lacked the panache to make good food. I’ve tried to make meat pies before using frozen pie crusts, filo pastry, etc., but it all turned out horribly. As a cook, I’m really excited to try new things, but baking to me was like being a vegan: It’s nice enough to try as long as none of your friends see you.
Ruhlman put up a post about cherry pie and I thought, “It’s time to break your bad habits Fletti and get your ‘bake-on’. I followed his recipe and here are my diary pictures:
The dough. Followed the directions, but buzzed it in the food processor to mix and then wrapped and chilled for an hour.
I think if you own a cherry pitter, you are a knob, so I pitted these with a paring knife. I stained the hell out of my fingers, but baking is a blood sport people. Get in there and get it on like Donkey Kong!
Okay, the crust on the bottom of the pie was gold, but the top crust pulled out the inner wimp in me. I didn’t know how thin to roll it so I erred on the thick side. Please note my lattice work. No simple pie top for me. I want you to see the love through the dough windows. I didn’t use a pastry wheel to make the lattice pieces because having a pastry wheel also makes you a knob. I’m all about getting in touch with my rustic side of pie craft.
After an hour, this is what the bad boy looked like. The crust was nice and light, if a bit heavy on the top. The crust had a nice flakiness to it. I’m not talking a “One Flew Over the CooCoo’s Nest” flaky, more of a John and Kate Plus Eight type flaky. We whipped up a little cream and did a big piece of this. As I normally think that more is more, I had a second piece and started feeling a bit off. Note to self, one piece of pie before bedtime. I didn’t use lard anywhere in the recipe. It is basically Michael Ruhlman’s recipe from his blog here.
Recipe:
12 ounce flour
8 ounces butter
4 ounces ice water
5 cups sour cherries, pits removed
1-1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup corn starch
Cut the butter into the flour, mix in the water just till a dough forms (don’t over work it). Chill the dough. Roll out three quarters of the dough to fill a pie dish, save the rest for the lattice crust.
Combine the cherries, sugar and cornstarch and toss. Pour the mixture into your pie shell, lay your lattice over this and pinch the edges to form an appealing rim. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes then reduce the temperature to 350 and conintue baking for another hour or until the filling is thick and bubbling.
If you aren’t following Ruhlman, start. He is the reason Paul and I started making our own Bacon, talking more openly about food, and probably played a role in this blog forming. He is a great food writer, I’ve read all of his food books, and we will be giving away a copy of his new book Ratio, in an upcoming contest. We are also going to start a new feature called “Chewing the fat with…” and are going to look to see if Ruhlman will answer some questions for us. Make this pie and you’ll be surprised with a great result from your efforts. Now that I have ‘broke my cherry’ sort of speak, I’m going to look to do the recipe with peaches, apples, and I see this crust holding a Guinness Beef Stew in the fall.
I thought for a moment that this might be a vegan dessert. After all, I was only using sugar, flour, cheeries, corn starch, and water. How the hell could something be so good if not one thing with a face contributed an ingredient. Then it struck me. BUTTER! Butter was used. That came from something with a face. Thank the lord we had some animal product in there.
Life is good. Eat it up!
I love pie…