Take Action on the National Pie Shortage

The looming national pie shortage has been developing for a long while. I first noticed the trend when I went away to school. For the first time in my life, there was no mom or grandmother nearby to supply fresh pie, that important staple of a boy’s life. For a while I bore up under it as best I could, putting in special requests for holidays at home then resolving not to miss it too much at other times.  Dreaming about my favorite pies became more common. Black raspberry is and will always be the finest fruit pie in the world. Nothing else comes close. Apricot, peach, cherry, and rhubarb are firmly in second place. Custard is heavenly. A pecan pie is remarkable so long as there is enough whipped cream on the top. Pumpkin is really good, and even better if a friend’s grandmother makes it using butternut squash. Apple and blueberry are okay, along with sugar cream. There were fuzzy memories of just one or two raisin pies my grandmother had made in the late 1950s or early 1960s. All made for great pie nostalgia.

Fourteen packed pages about creating a boy’s culinary nirvana

So a few years went by and the dearth of pies became more pronounced. No one seemed to feel the urgency to make pies as often as the previous generations had done. I tried to keep a healthy perspective on it all.  For quite a few years I had dallied with some cooking, mostly at holidays, even developing the ability to prepare an entire Thanksgiving dinner without provoking much outrage by the consumers. I made bread and meat loaf and turkey and steaks and did pretty well.  One day when I was daydreaming particularly hard about the raspberry pies my grandmother had made, I had an inspiration. Why not try to make a pie myself? I could make the attempt in secret to avoid potential embarrassment. If I were successful, I might not tell anyone and just eat the whole thing. The cost of ingredients and a pie plate could be managed, so I began to keep an eye out for available fruit.  Black raspberries come in around July and it must have been fall when this idea occurred to me. Rhubarb and tart cherries were long gone that year. That meant that the available fresh fruit centered on apples. Don’t get me wrong. Apple pie is good stuff, but it had never been a favorite, although I had eaten plenty of it. If I made an apple pie that turned out to be a failure, at least I wouldn’t suffer the loss of all those black raspberries, so I decided to go for it.  My mother had kept an edition of the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book on the shelf as I was growing up. Here’s the 1953 edition I remember. That middle vessel is a gravy boat, so that was encouraging. I had grown up with gravy made from scratch at many meals, and at nearly every big meal. I decided to purchase a copy. Inside the ringbound book there was an entire section just on pies: fourteen packed pages about creating a boy’s culinary nirvana. 

---

There are fancy-pants cookbooks and straightforward plain living cookbooks

I learned a lot in there. Here are some of the great lessons.  There are fancy-pants cookbooks and straightforward plain living cookbooks. The Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook is the latter. It was an easy-to-understand and easy-to-follow cookbook. Who ever wrote it wanted me to succeed and made it pretty simple for even a pie novice to understand. I was a pretty good reader by then, and I had mastered following instructions..  Pies are not difficult to make, I discovered. The pies I wanted to make had two main components: the crust and the filling. If one can manage a good pie crust, the fruit filling will generally take care of itself. The ladies at Better Homes and Gardens have a great basic double pie crust recipe: Two cups of all purpose flour (I always use unbleached), ½ teaspoon of salt, 2/3 cup of shortening, and six or seven tablespoons of cold water. In a mixing bowl, mix the flour and salt, then pack the shortening into a 1/3 cup measure, strike the top off flat, scrape the shortening onto the top of the flour, and repeat. A pastry cutter works great, but my grandmother always used a table fork, and that works just fine. The cookbook says to cut in the shortening until the pieces are the size of small peas. A little smaller is fine. Basically, you mash the shortening into the flour with the fork until it becomes well mixed and crumbly. Make a couple of wells in the mix and add the cold water by tablespoons, mixing with a fork before adding the next one. My pies have always insisted on seven tablespoons of water. Mix this with a fork until it’s mostly combined and moistened. Glomp this together with your hands adding all the remnants in the bowl until there is a single lump of dough that is uniform in texture. Divide the dough evenly in half. Set one half aside. Sprinkle some flour on your dough board or clean counter top. Lay half the dough on the flour to begin rolling. It helps to rub a little flour on the rolling pin. If you don’t have a rolling pin, a tall straight-sided glass will work, or the dough can be pushed out by hand. An heirloom rolling pin is a fine thing to have for these occasions. Roll the dough out evenly until it will more than cover a 9 inch pie plate. I like Pyrex or Fire King, but any ceramic pie plate is fine. Carefully pick up the rolled dough and place it over the pie plate so it covers the bottom and extends up over the sides. Use a knife to cut off the dough even with the outer edges of the dish. Set the dough scraps aside for later. 

---

Support Canada Free Press

---

At this point, savor the aroma in the air as the pie bakes

Repeat the process with the other half of the dough, then set it aside on a sheet of waxed paper. Refrigerating the dough may make it flakier. Then comes the filling. There’s a chart in the cookbook for making fruit fillings, and it pays to follow it closely. About five cups of apple slices work well, but some recipes take a bit less. The amount of sugar to add is up to you. I generally add a little less sugar than a recipe calls for. This brings out the tartness better. Pie filling often has some added thickener such as flour, cornstarch, or tapioca. My mother always put tapioca in cherry pie. Experiment with thickeners and note the results in the cookbook. Your pies will be less swampy when using the amount of thickener that suits you.  Roll out the dough scraps cut from the edges. Sprinkle the flat dough circle with sugar and cinnamon or sugar and almond extract. Roll this up tightly and seal the edges, then cut into one-inch segments. Bake these in a separate pie pan for about 20 minutes to have what some call dough cakes and others call roly-polys. Once cooled, these will delight children of all ages.  Apple pies are best made with firm, tart apples, and tart often means a little more green. When using a bag of red apples, the ones with a little green still showing will make fine pie. Cherry pie usually calls for a tart cherry variety like Montmorency. Sweet cherries are okay, but the best cherry pie I remember always had the tang of tart cherries.  With the filling prepared, pour it into the bottom pie shell and level it. Lay the top pie dough onto the fruit mixture and trim off the edges as before. Slightly moisten the edges of the pie dough and press them together using a thumb and a thumb and forefinger to make a fluted edge. Cut vents in the top crust. I like to dedicate pies to an occasion, so I’ll often cut names, dates, or seasons into the top crust. Bake in a preheated oven according to directions. When the pie is done, it should be golden brown and bubbling slightly through the vents cut into the crust. At this point, savor the aroma in the air as the pie bakes. 

---

So quit complaining about the lack of pie in your life. Find some fruit or butternut squash or pecans and get out there and do something about it!

Warm pie is a fine thing. Pie is always comfort food, and warm comfort food is best. Apple pies become even better with a topping like ice cream but pecan and pumpkin pie require whipped cream on top. There are worse things than pie with coffee. I don’t like to refrigerate leftover pie. It will hold up on the countertop as long as it lasts, which isn’t usually very long.  I had grown up with Grandma Smith’s pies, made with either shortening, or lard. Both are good, but the lard crust is a little better because of the extra flavor the lard brings with it. Lard does a biscuit no harm, either. I discovered later that if one is short of shortening, butter works just fine, too. Pie crust does not require vodka or egg whites, contrary to some of the fancy pants cookbooks and websites out there. If you like cream pies or meringue, there are good recipes for those, too. Basic is always good where I come from. Bake what you like and keep notes.  Another lesson for the mnemonically challenged among us took longer for me to remember. Always mark up your cookbooks. The archivist in me says it’s best to use a #2 pencil, but go with a favorite marker so long as it doesn’t come through the page. Note the nuances and experiments for every attempt. The historian in me likes to include dates and occasions to make it easier to recall memorable meals and desserts. I have a sugar cream pie recipe in my grandmother’s handwriting. It’s a priceless relic.  That same pie crust recipe makes excellent crust for chicken pot pie and beef pot pie. That’s some real comfort food right there. There are easy recipes for making those from scratch, too.  So quit complaining about the lack of pie in your life. Find some fruit or butternut squash or pecans and get out there and do something about it!