So, to recap, this weekend I have already made 8 half pints of blackberry jam and 4 half pints of strawberry jam. Figuring that wasn’t quite enough abuse on my poor knee joints, today I made 6 half pints of peach jam…
Then used even more peaches for fried peach pies…
These were simply amazing, most amazing pastry dough EVER. The recipe came from a cookbook I knew I had to have once I saw the title: Screen Doors and Sweet Tea I’ll probably get all lawyered if I repost the recipe here, so just buy the book, mmkay?
And finally, today (appropriately enough, Pi day) saw my very first attempt – EVER – at pie. Why? Well, not a huge fan of fruit in semi-sweet bread, on the whole I’d just rather have a piece of chocolate, but it’s kind of one of those things you need to know how to cook, like turkey and french bread. Oh, that’s just me? Anyway, here’s the pie:
The crust recipe came from the above Screen Doors cookbook, and uses the French method frissage (demonstrated somewhere in that damn video, I lost patience about 30 seconds in…looks like she starts on it about 4:18 in the timeline there), which is feathering the dough on your countertop…taking an egg-sized piece, smooshing it with the heel of your hand away from you, then repeating with the remaining dough. You’ll see some say, “Gasp! Mon dieu! Frissaging will destroy the gluten!” Pfft. Don’t overwork it and you’re fine.
See?
The crust was crazy-good, flaky and tender. I am not a Granny Smith fan, so I used Pink Lady apples exclusively. This made for a non-goopy filling, with nice tender-sweet apples. Not the prettiest pie in the world, but tasted damn good for a first ever effort.