Baking Arts - Week 2: Apple Pie

So of course the very first thing we made was an apple pie. That quintessential dessert that is forever associated with American culture. Wait, hang on a second, we're in Canada here! What gives?

In the absence of satisfactory answers, I will attribute this selection to a few factors:
1) It's fall, so this is the perfect seasonal dessert
2) It's fairly easy to make, and teaches the basics of dough creation
There, problem solved. There will be no assimilation in my cooking.

The dough for this pie was prepared in week 1, and frozen in preparation for this class. The dough was thankfully made with vegetable shortening. Oh, the terrbile heart pangs I had, imagining platefuls of lard that I'd be forced to use in my dough. Lucky for me, the lard is too expensive for the school to provide (read: we're a bit on the cheap side), so vegetable shortening it was. Also a convenient way to address any religious or moral concerns.


When preparing the dough, we first worked the shortening and flour by hand, creating walnut-sized pieces, and then finished mixing it in a gorgeous, giant, industrial mixer. My lovely Kitchenaid would merely cower in its shadow. Expensive sports cars? They've got nothing on this mixer.

The last part of preparation was kneading the dough by hand, which was fantastically relaxing. I can completely see why Anna Olson gave up her banking day job for baking. Kneading dough really is a lovely, soothing experience, just as advertised by our cooking instructor. I've made dough before, but never quite got to knead it in the proper way, so this was enlightening.

So back to this week - making the actual pie. We used Spy apples, which stand up well to baking and don't turn to mush. They also have a robust, not-too-sweet falvour. I've picked Apy apples for baking before, and was glad we got to work with them.

After peeling and chopping the apples, we mixed them with some lemon zest & juice, sugar, cinnamon, melted butter and cornstarch. The cornstarch was added to bond the gooey goodness together, so the apple pie wouldn't come out of the oven sloshing around like tourists in a resort pool. I've used the trick before, and it works well, without detracting from the flavour. We also let the apple mixture stand for nearly half an hour to allow the juices to drain from the apples - that's the stuff that you later leave in the bowl to prevent soggy pies. Also has good potential for apple sauce...

Finally, we rolled out our defrosted pie dough, one piece for the bottom crust and one piece for the top crust. The dough was very smooth and easy to work with, and didn't suffer at all from the freezing/thawing cycle.

The pie was first filled to the brim:

And then covered, with decorative elements included:

All the students' pies went into an enormous industrial over, somewhat reminiscent of a pizza oven. They then baked for an hour, while we got to clean up and socialize.

Finally, the piping-hot, delcious smelling pies were ready. The entire baking lab smelled like a beautiful fall afternoon. The crust came out flaky and delicious, while the filling was sweet and gooey, but not soggy. Yes, of course I had a slice as soon as I got home! Although the rest of it will be shared with family.