![]() Cover the bowl and let your apples sit until the dough is ready to be shaped. In a large bowl, toss your apple slices with the rest of the ingredients (excluding the egg).In the meantime, prepare your apple brandy pie filling.Wrap with cling film and let the dough chill in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. Add the ice water, 1/4 cup at a time, until a soft dough forms. Using a pastry blender, combine the flour and fat until a fine crumbly mixture forms.In a large bowl, whisk together flour, salt and icing sugar for crust.If the steam can’t escape, it remains trapped in the pie, resulting in excess moisture. This allows steam from the filling to escape into the oven. This means cutting slits into the top of the crust, usually with a decorative cutter, or sometimes simply with cut-outs. If you are getting fancy and placing a crust over the top of the pie, you must vent it. Yes, flouring the workspace a little helps the dough to keep from sticking and peeling, but use as little as possible to prevent adding excess flour to the dough. Should I flour ‘everything?’ When rolling out the dough, it can be very tempting to go nuts flouring absolutely everything from the counter to your pin to your hands to the dough itself.Top tip for making a good crust? Handle the dough as little as possible.This allows the ‘filling’ to congeal, and for excess moisture to soak into the apples. While you certainly ‘can’ slice into a freshly made apple pie right away, the pie should be allowed to ‘set’ for about an hour before cutting into it. Any longer than that, and it should be put in the fridge. How long can I leave it out? Apple pie can be made eight hours ahead, and kept out, uncovered, at room temperature.Consider mixing Granny Smith and Honey Crisp, or Golden Delicious with Winesap, or McIntosh and Northern Spy. Ideally a mix of firmer, though tarter, apples, along with some sweeter, yet softer, apples. What apple to use, really? Rather than stressing over which apple is best, my advice is to use a combination of apples.Coconut sugar is also a decent substitute for brown sugar. In both cases, stir until combined, and then use that in place of the brown sugar. Mix a teaspoon of maple syrup mixed with a quarter of a cup of white sugar. Simply mix a teaspoon of molasses with a quarter of a cup of white sugar, and use that in place of the brown sugar. There are a couple of ‘okay’ substitutes. Rum, or your favorite whiskey, would work deliciously in this recipe in place of the brandy. In its solid form, coconut oil substitutes at a roughly one-to-one ratio. Finally, coconut oil, though I would strongly suggest using this in its ‘solid’ form, perhaps even chilling it in the fridge if necessary. I would suggest adding in a few pinches of sugar, otherwise you’ll end up with a slightly savory crust. Again, this substitutes at a one-to-one ratio. This is a tricky one, as flavor, texture, and moisture varies wildly from brand to brand depending on how the lard was sourced. First up is shortening, and this is probably the best. For crusts, there are several substitutes. As such, don’t feel pressured to go through the fuss of making the crust from scratch if you truly don’t want to. In all honesty, you can make a perfectly delicious homemade pit with a store-bought crust. Bread flour would result in a ‘hard’ and ‘dense’ crust, while baking flour would result in a crumbly crust that fails to keep its form through cooking. Flour. All-purpose flour is probably best for today’s crust.However, due note that sweetness can be altered with added sugar, but once a pie is ‘mushy,’ there’s no fixing it. So, which to use? The choice is truly a matter of preference. Though not quite as firm as Granny Smith, they are markedly sweeter and are generally ‘firm enough’ for baking. And that’s why Honey Crisp are generally considered the ‘next best’ apples for baking. That said, this ideal baking texture comes at a price, and that price is sweetness, as Granny Smith apples are fairly tart. And that’s good thing, since no one wants a mushy pie. So firm, in fact, that they will retain their shape and texture under almost any amount of baking. It’s said that best apples for baking are Granny Smith, and this is simply because they are so firm.
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