Lucky. That’s all I can come up with as to how on earth I made a pie that tasted like that. Perhaps I should explain a bit. It’s rare that I make something and when I have a bite I think, “Holy cow, that’s way better than I expected.” Such was my response from my most recent pie. I make it sound like I bake pies on a regular basis. They are a bit of a rarity, but after this I’m thinking I may have to do it again.
The pastry recipe came from The Best Recipe cookbook, from Cooks Illustrated. Simple, quick. Food processor, cold butter and shortening, a few tablespoons of ice cold water and some time to rest in the fridge.
Here’s a tidbit: the pastry was made with some special, possibly illegal, butter that my sister-in-law sourced for me. That does sound strange, and it may sound like I’m a conspiracy theorist, but I can assure you that up until very recently, in Canada, it was true. I believe things have changed somewhat but until a couple of years ago it was the law that all butter in Canada had to have a fat content of at least 80% and that all butter had to be made from pooled milk. As in, if you were a dairy farmer and you wanted to make your own butter with a higher fat content or from a specific type of cow (Holstein, Jersey…) you were not allowed to do it. It was against the law. As a consequence all butter was 80% fat and really rather boring.
When I was a kid there were two types of butter in the store: Salted and unsalted. A decade or more ago they added organic butter for a total of three types, but that was about it. No European Style butter. No butter with sea salt. No ghee, no ability to have any say whatsoever in the type of butter, except with or without salt. Like our eggs. White, brown and free-range. That’s ti.
Of course you could buy butter from New Zealand if you wanted to. Or the USA. It was in specialty shops and it cost $14. For a half-pound. More expensive than beef tenderloin at the butcher. Nothing like a little import tax of like 200% to dissuade the casual cook.
But somehow someone is making unsalted 84% milk-fat butter and selling it for less than a king’s ransom. And they are doing it in Canada, so the rules must have changed at some point.
I used some of this 84% butter for the pastry. Amazing how I can go from baking to supply management in a couple of paragraphs.
That was a segue. Back to the pie.
Regardless of the butter, I think the key, really, to an epic apple pie is (big surprise here) the apples. The recipe called for Granny Smith and something a bit sweeter, like McIntosh, but I used transparents. We have a transparent apple tree in our backyard. It’s probably as old as the house – so pushing 100. The apples are almost inedible off the tree, but the flavour for a pie is amazing. Apparently they’re great for applesauce, too. The ripen in mid-July to mid-August, so now is the ultimate apple-pie making season.
My sister-in-law was in town for an impromptu visit and I managed to get the pie into the oven and out in time for it to cool so everyone could have a slice. It was a big 9-inch pie. It lasted a few hours and then was all gone.
The ultimate compliment for a chef (and timid baker) is to have the food demolished before you have an opportunity to put leftovers away in the fridge.
