CHERRY PIE TASTE TEST (Adventures in Baking)
In Which the Author Tests His Homemade Pie vs three Internationally Famous, Millions-Sold Pies and Proves He Could Make Trillions of $$ as a Pieman
I have recently become a cooker and a baker (or is it a cooker and a bake?). At any rate, I have become the chief cook & bottle washer (and grocery shopper) at my house due to a change in circumstances: namely that I retired from work upon reaching the age of 62 a few months back.
For those wondering how it’s possible to retire ... it’s easy as pie (no pun intended)! Anybody can do it! All you have to do is get tired, and then get tired once again. Then, voila! You are re-tired.
And you thought it sounded involved and complex!
Anyway, back to the pie business. Having been born into a long line of pie lovers, and having inherited all of that dough-eyed longing to an extreme degree, I have been a consumer of pies for as long as I can remember. A consumer both in the sense of purchasing them (when necessary) and eating them (whenever possible).
Now that I am the cooker/baker on the premises, I have been making some of my own pies. Of course, in order to validly claim that you have made a pie, you must make the crust yourself. After all, if you buy a crust at the store, all you then have to do is throw some sugar and flour in whatever you’re going to use for the stuffing, dump it on the bottom crust, plop the top half of the crust over it, and bake the whole shebang. It’s not quite as easy as that, but making the crust is much the hard(er) part.
So the problem with buying a pie crust at the store is ... you’re cheating. That might be okay if the store-bought pie crust tasted good, was good for you, and didn’t break the grocery budget. An even bigger problem than that, though, is that store-bought crust tastes more like cardboard than it absolutely ought to or has a right to.
I have been experimenting with various recipes for crust. My mother and wife are both excellent pie-makers, so I used their recipe first. The main difference in recipes seems to be how strict you are about putting the dough in the fridge and/or using ice cold water, AND whether you use shortening, or butter, or both.
That first pie that I made, an Apple (Granny Smith mostly, with a couple of red apples thrown in for variety and to fill out the volume) pie, turned out quite good. That recipe uses shortening – no butter.
Then I tried my second recipe, stolen from a friend. Actually, he gladly lent it to me. He uses both shortening and butter. And ice water, infused with Vodka to prevent the water from solidifying (turning to ice). I’m not Russian, so I don’t have any Vodka around the place. Therefore, I used Gin instead (my wife is of British descent (née Flowers), and so we have some on hand).
The second pie was also good. That is to say, the crust was good. The stuffing (filling) was not very good, though, because as it (Mixed Berry) seemed quite over-viscous to me when I was stirring it, I kept adding flour until stirring it provided some resistance. I ended up adding way too much flour, and the filling baked into a semi-solid mass which left something to be desired, to say the least. Edible, but not up to my tough standards. You don’t want your berry pie to be too runny, but you also don’t want it to stand at attention akin to the Red Sea when the ancient Israelites were crossing it. Somewhere in between. So, next (this) time: less flour in the “stuffing.”
My third attempt, to be bravely made today is going to be a Cherry Pie. When I shopped for the cherries (no fresh ones were available, so I bought cans), I didn’t know whether to get “Dark Sweet” or “Red Tart” cherries, so I got one can of each.
The third crust recipe is up for today’s try. This recipe uses butter only (no shortening); as did the second recipe, it calls for cold water to be added to the flour/salt/chilled butter mixture. So the gin stash was further depleted.
My goal is to determine which crust recipe is best and then bake a gazillion pies (or so) on “Pie Day” (actually “Pi Day”), namely 3/14, which falls on a Sunday this year (2021).
Something I have going for me this time (in addition to having gained the hard-won knowledge to be wary of how much flour I add to the stuffing) is that I watched a YouTube video on how to roll out the dough/crust. This helped me immensely, as I will be using Parchment Paper or Wax[ed] Paper for the first time. I had read that this is the way to go, but I didn’t know just how to use the paper – that is, whether I should write on it, read it, stand on it, put it on my head, weave it through the dough, or what. Now I know, having watched the aforementioned video (twice). And now I also have learned not to push the rolling pin over the edge of the dough, but only just right up to the edge.
The Crust Whisperer’s video is watchable from here.
By not touching the dough much -- because of it being under wraps (no pun intended) while I’m rolling it out, this is supposed to add to its flakiness.
My other goal is to perform a taste test, not only of which of the three pie crusts I have made tastes best, but of my pie versus the mass-produced ones I sometimes purchase (when under duress due to a bad case of pie-desperation). This triumvirate come from Dangerway (AKA “Safeway”), Grocery Outlet, and those available at that venue which offers fine Irish dining, McDonalds. The first and the third of these – though certainly not in the same league as a good homemade pie -- are pretty darn good for mass-produced, assembly-line “junk.” The other candidate, the Little Debbie pies, are edible but not much beyond that.
Note: This is not to dis or dismiss the Little Debbie brand - I’m kookoo for their Peanut Butter & Chocolate Nutty Bars/Nutty Buddys. Then again, I’ve never met a combination of chocolate and peanuts or chocolate and peanut butter that I didn’t like - Reese’s P.B. Cups, Buckeyes, even a handful of Spanish peanuts with a handful of chocolate chips does the trick.
Nevertheless, even as regards the two “good” store-bought, mass-produced pies (Signature brand pies from Safeway, and McDonald’s pies), they are only “good” in the sense that they taste pretty good; I don’t know if they are “good” in terms of healthy eating; probably not.
If I end up by saying that my pie is the best of the bunch, remember that it’s remotely possible that I am biased, as I am (closely) related to the pie maker/baker. In fact, he’s the person I see gazing back at me, dumbfounded, every time I look in the mirror.
Here is the Dangerway Pie (in the box and then after I sunk my choppers into it):
Now here is the Little Debbie Pie:
...and here is the McDonald’s Pie:
Finally – last, but not least (hopefully), here is my Pie:
Now for the taste test (drum roll, por favor!)
...
The verdict is in! Mine is far and away the best! Even if I write so myself. Nobody can prove me wrong, at any rate. And it’s a matter of taste (no pun intended) anyway, right? Personal preference, that is?
As for which of my three crust recipes was best … I don’t know. I will have to try all three of them again, now that I know better how to do it. But any of them definitely beat the “pans” off the assembly-line pies made by Rosie the Robot.
So the “crux of the biscuit” (as Frank used to say) -- or rather “the crux of the pie crust” -- is that I could obviously, logically, and demonstrably earn trillions of dollars making and selling my wares (while making sure to never fall prey to any Simple Simon-type individuals).
It is only logical, after all, that if Safeway can make millions on their pies, and McDonalds can rake in billions on theirs, I could make trillions as a pieman or piemonger. But I don’t feel like it.
I normally restrict myself to making a pie only once a fortnight (every other Tuesday), but on “Pi[e] Day” (3/14), I plan on baking all of the following pies:
Apple
Cherry
Strawberry-Rhubarb
Gooseberry
Blackberry
Mixed Berry
Banana Cream
Pumpkin
Potato Peel
As you can Sherlock out, I will be almost literally baking my head off, all while keeping a wary and weather eye out for Simple Simon, the bane of Piemen everywhere.