Easy As Pie

America’s favorite dessert is pie. No, we didn’t exactly invent pie, but an American dessert pie is very different from its old-world counterparts. For one thing, American pies are almost always round, a result of having to literally cut corners. The pioneer women, who were the most avid pie makers, were trying to stretch the ingredients they had on hand by enhancing them with crusts; indeed they often had more crust than filling. But pies were extremely popular and each generation has improved the variety, quality and diversity of pie.

Good pie was a point of pride with early American women and it showed up on the table for breakfast, dinner and supper. This was certainly true in my family. Both my grandmothers and my mother were famous for their pies. I learned at an early age to have a “hand” for making the crust—the real test of a good pie. Very few women still make pie crust from scratch any more—the store-bought ones are certainly reasonably good—and there is a myth that pie crust is a really difficult, messy and tedious enterprise.

Messy? Yes. But tedious or difficult? No. Ever heard of “easy as pie?” There are only four ingredients in pie crust: flour, shortening, salt and ice water. It is the technique that makes the difference, but it is not difficult to learn.

The fillings, even more than the crust, are where cooks can really get creative. But the favorite pies in America, according to several surveys, are, in this order: apple, cherry, pumpkin, lemon, chocolate, pecan and coconut cream.

Zig and I like to try pies in all our travels—especially ones close to home. Whenever we hear or read about a new pie place—we head out. It is amazing how many places claim to have wonderful pies and even build a reputation on them and then serve up a cardboard crust with a fancy filling. It’s the crust that makes the pie!!!

Well we have recently found two pie places that are really good—one is actually just about in our own backyard. The Stockholm Pie Company in Stockholm, Wisconsin is a real find. Janet Garretson, the owner/baker really knows how to make a crust and her fillings are delightful, too. On a recent stop we found a specialty—double lemon—on the menu. It was so good that the memory of it is still fresh after several weeks. I had the chutzpah to call and ask for the recipe. She refused, of course; after all, it is her stock in trade, but I had to try.

The second is a little further away. The Pie Place in Grand Marais, Minnesota has Betty’s Pies (further south on Highway 61 and an icon on the North Shore for years) beat, hands down.

While scouting through my cookbook collection for a recipe that resembled “double lemon,” I came up with a great idea—I will feature a pie of the month for this column. With the blueberries starting to flood the market, it seems appropriate to start with a good, old-fashioned blueberry pie.

Pastry:

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2/3 cup, plus 2 Tbsp. cold vegetable shortening
1 tsp. salt
5-7 Tbsp. ice water

Put flour into a mixing bowl. Measure shortening by the water displacement method: fill a 2-cup liquid measuring cup with 1 1/3 cups water. Fill the cup with shortening until water line reaches 2 cups. (Make sure that all the shortening is submerged.) Add two Tbsp. shortening to that in the measuring cup. Drain water off and add moist shortening to the flour. Add salt to the bowl. With a pastry blender or two knives, cut the shortening into the flour mixture until size of small peas. Add the ice water, one tablespoon at a time, to the flour mixture, tossing lightly with a fork after each addition. Do not stir or mix hard; just lightly toss until you can gather dough into a ball. Turn out onto a heavily floured board. Shape into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill one hour. Divide chilled dough in two and shape each part into disk gently. Flour board and top of dough and roll out with cloth-covered rolling pin into circle one inch larger in diameter than your pie pan. Slide a long, metal spatula carefully under circle, loosening it from the board. Roll the crust loosely around rolling pin, then unroll, centered over the pie pan. There should be about a 1-inch overhang. Fill the pie and then repeat with other half of dough. Dot filling with 2 Tbsp. butter and place second pastry over the top. Flute sides, cut vents and bake according to directions.

Filling:

4 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
¾-1 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 Tbsp. lemon juice


Heat oven to 425 degrees. Prepare pastry. Stir together sugar, flour and blueberries and lemon juice. Turn into pastry-lined 9” pie plate and dot with butter. Adjust top crust. Cover edge with 2 inch strips of aluminum foil to prevent excessive browning of crust. Remove foil last 15 minutes of baking. Set on a large cookie sheet to catch overflow juices. Bake 45 to 50 minutes.

Cool pie before cutting and serving. If you cut while too warm, the juices will not be set up. After cooling, fruit will reabsorb juice and filling will “set.”