First Double Crust - Week #7

So, I've spent an absolutely ridiculous amount of time researching the chemistry of pie crusts this past week.  If you ever have a bunch of time to spare (or are prone to obsessive behavior), I recommend it for some stimulating reading.  Truth be told, I'm still completely floored by all of the information that's available, as well as the variety of opinions regarding what it takes to make a good/great crust.  The fun thing (perhaps fun only to me), having done the leg work, is that I'm starting to feel really comfortable with the science of it all.  When I see or read different theories on making the perfect flaky, tender crust, I have a good idea of the factors at play and why many of the recommendations are made.  I'm actually still working on an entry about crusts and what I've learned about making them.  Hopefully that will be completed this week, but I'll include some of my experiences from this week's pie in this post as well.

It should be noted -- and I proved this week  -- that the theory and the practice are two entirely different things.  My claims of "understanding" don't translate into the perfect pie crust, but at least I feel as though I'll be able to make reasonable and appropriate adjustments to my recipe and technique in order to make strides toward the ideal.

Pineapple-Rhubarb pie

My two major objectives for this week were to 1) make a double-crust pie since I really wanted to experiment with the crust construction, and 2) make something lighter that the heavy, heavy cream and nut pies of the past few weeks.

This pineapple-rhubarb recipe seemed to me to fit the bill on both fronts.  I was completely surprised at the number of different recipes that I was able to find for pineapple-rhubarb since I had never even heard of it before.  I probably spent at least an hour reading them over and trying to pick a "winner."  Given the amount of time that I spend trying to find the right recipe, I thought it would be a good thing to lay out my criteria for selection here, so that readers would understand how I make these decisions.  That process is as follows:  

1. I Google the internets for all recipes for the pie variety I'm trying to make, and
   
2. I iterate over the recipes, eliminating recipes based upon absolutely nothing tangible (my whim) until there's only one left.
   

I suspect that at least one person out there may be disappointed by this process.  I know I was disappointed having to write it, and I knew going in what the end result was going to be, so I can relate.  The bottom line is that I don't really have anything resembling a meaningful process based on any merits of a particular recipe.  It's all poorly tuned instinct.  That approach has served me poorly my whole life, so I figured why stop now.

"Get to the pie already"

Fine, fine!  I made the crust for the pie on Saturday afternoon so that it could rest in the refrigerator over night for rolling out and baking on Sunday.  If this is any indication of how much six weeks of pie baking have changed my life, I went to a friend's house to help with a home improvement project earlier in the day and took him a pumpkin pie.  Don't ask me why.  Maybe I'm just excited to finally be developing a useful skill (I don't have the recommended bow hunting or nunchuku skills to get a girlfriend, unfortunately).  Although it has been a while since I read it, I'm pretty sure that day #4 of The Purpose-Driven Life has something to do with making pies.  I'll verify and report back...

The crust actually went reasonably well.  I followed the essence of a recipe that I'll share in my future crust post, making a few minor adjustments along the way based upon my own personal thoughts about the process.  I didn't really encounter any major issues while making or rolling out the crust.  The resulting crust was really flaky and tasted pretty good, but the edges fell quite a bit, almost melting from the edges of the pie.  Next time around I'll be more aware of developing structure and elasticity, and not quite so focused on flakiness and tenderness.  Then again, it might all be just dumb luck and circumstance.

The filling was really easy to prepare.  We had exactly three cups of rhubarb left over from this summer, which was perfect for this recipe.  A completely new ingredient to me was instant tapioca.  I didn't really know what the purpose was, so I did a little bit of reading on that as well.  Of course, there are multiple types of tapioca available (instant/quick, regular/pearl, and tapioca starch).  As all of you experienced bakers undoubtedly know, it's just another of the many ways to thicken the filling of a pie (or pudding or whatever).  I have no idea how a recipe writer chooses one of the dozen ways to thicken and get a filling to set up.  I'm sure that there are some rules, but I definitely don't know them yet.  I found warnings in several places that using tapioca (even instant) would result in little gelatinous balls in the filling that may be disconcerting to consumers of the food.  I found that I really had to search for them, although they were present. I really don't think that I would have noticed them if I hadn't known they were there.  

Sealing and fluting the edges of the double crust was completely new to me, although I don't suppose there is any real magic to it.  There is definitely some magic to making it look decent though.  I don't have that magic and failed pretty significantly in that regard.  I don't think pie making is going to improve my artistic abilities.  Instead, it seems to be pointing out my deficiencies quite effectively.

Anyway, here's a picture of the finished pie

 

and a couple of pictures post-cutting

The crust ended up being very flaky, but as I mentioned, it didn't hold it's shape very well.  You can see how the fluted edges basically melted, and in the first picture the oddity in the upper right is where some of the edge just fell off the pie plate while baking.

On a happier note, you can kind of see the flakiness in this picture (notice my long, luxurious nails in the photo)

While everything didn't go exactly as planned, this pie was a really good experience and turned out good enough to eat -- the folks at work were subjected to my experiment once again, thank you guinea pigs.  

I haven't spent significant words in past posts discussing how the pies tasted, or what the final result might have been if I knew what I was doing.  In this case, it's worth mentioning that I really enjoyed this recipe.  Actually, I doubt there is anything special about this particular recipe, it's the pineapple-rhubarb flavor that I really liked.  I just thought it ended up being a really good pie overall.  The crust was tasty and flaky and the filling very light and enjoyable.  If you like rhubarb, give it a try next time you get your hands on some.  It's now definitely on my list of favorites.

Other Miscellaneous stuff

I get the feeling that this blog is much more interesting when I royally screw up.  I'm not planning on it, but I'm sure there's at least a little bit more of that in the future.

 

This was such a good break from the sweet, sweet, sweet pies of the previous weeks.

I screwed up the spelling of Geof's name (from Ace Of Cakes) in previous posts.  If you're out there Geof, my deepest apologies.

I added a slideshow of all completed pies to the top the blog.  Enjoy!