TWD: Double Crusted Blueberry Pie

Double crusted blueberry pie

Nothing says 4th of July like good ol’ fashioned apple pie. Well this week, we’re doing a twist on that and making blueberry pie instead. Blueberries are in season right now in southern California so they’re perfect for this recipe.

Blueberries

First of all, I used my trusted Sherry Yard’s Pie dough recipe. Her pie dough is very flaky and rises just right every time. I cut and froze the butter and then used my stand mixer to cut it into the dough.

This is what it looks like once the dough comes together and chilled it overnight.

The next day I rolled out the dough into two ~12″ rounds. One of them goes in the pie plate as the bottom crust. Then you add the bread crumbs and blueberries mixed with the sugar/flour mixture.

Finally you add the top crust and flute the edges. I added a sprinkling of raw turbinado sugar for an extra bit of crunch. In my haste I forgot to take a picture of the assembled pie before baking. I realized this after the pie was already in the oven so this picture is blurry. Sorry!

About 45 minutes later, tada! Blueberry pie. The pie looked really tantalizing as it came out of the oven with the juices bubbling and the scent of ripe berries. Mmmm…

Blueberry Pie

Our guests and I gulfed this baby down in a hurry. I didn’t even have a chance to take a picture of an individual slice of pie. I also made some Chocolate Blueberry Ice Cream but that escaped the camera as well. I’ll have to be faster with my camera trigger-finger next time.

Apple Pie – Crumb Crust, Double Crust, Lattice Top, and Tart

This is an Apple Crumb Pie that I baked a while back.  It has crunchy broken up crumbs scattered over the top of the pie. This is the simplest one to make out of the double crusted pies.

Next we have the Classic Double Crust Apple Pie.  This is what you usually think of when you hear the words “apple pie”.  Double crust means simply that – two crusts.  One on the bottom and one on top.

Notice the slashes made in the top crust.  These are to let steam vent as the apples cook underneath.

Double crust apple pies tend to me quite rich with the flavor of the buttery crust.

Finally we have the Lattice Top Apple Pie.  It has a top crust made from criss-crossing strips of pie dough.  This creates a dramatic effect as neat grid reveals the golden apples underneath.

With the lattice top, I cut a rectangular piece of pie dough into thin strips.  Then I used egg wash as an adhesive as I layered the strips over the top of the pie.

And finally as a bonus here is an Apple Tart.  The difference between a tart and a pie is that a tart is open faced.  That is, it doesn’t have a second layer covering it.  Apple tarts are to France as apple pies are to the US.

Here I tried to neatly slice the apples and then arrange them in a floral pattern.  The slicing probably took more time than the rest of the assembly of the pie!

In the middle of the pie I tried to make a floral arrangement.  And it’s a little burnt. The moral of the story is that to prevent the top from burning, you should place the dessert in the bottom third of the oven when baking.  I put this tart on the top shelf and this is what happened – a lesson well learned.