The Piemaker

I enjoy baking, always have. Often on summer days when it is too hot to venture outside into the blistering heat, I turn on the oven and make the house as warm inside as out.

Traditionally I have made cookies and cakes, and when the mood hits I would pull a pie crust out of the oven and make an apple pie. I generally don’t venture out of my baking comfort zone, but on this occasion I leapt out of that zone.

I love the show “Pushing Daisies,” I own the first season and am patiently (or as patient as one as eager as I am can be) waiting for the second season to be released by ABC. On occasion, while watching this terribly witty show, I would get in the mood to bake pies; however, on this day I was not stricken by this show but a strange impulse from my sophomore year in high school when my dream job was a baker. I decided to make a pie completely from scratch...crust and all.

Let me preface this entry by saying that unless you are very brave and strong hearted, you should not attempt to create pie crust from scratch.



I recently bought a pie dish from Williams-Sonoma. It is a stone dish with ruffled edges, it is an amazing pie dish. Unlike the glass dishes that it looks like, this stone dish cooks perfectly--perhaps better than metal dishes. I also invested in a baking book from Williams-Sonoma which includes season recipes for pies.

This particular Saturday, with an urge that must have stemmed from three years ago when I would bake something each weekend, I decided to take a leap of faith and bake a pie completely from scratch. My mom immediately told me when I let her know my intentions that it would not be easy, but when I decide to do something, nothing will stop me.

Looking through the book that I bought, the sour cherry pie caught my eye. I’ve made a cherry pie before, so I knew that I would enjoy it. I didn’t want to spend my entire Saturday making a pie from scratch and not even be able to enjoy it. This way, I knew that I would at least be able to enjoy the pie and that it would all be eaten.

I looked through the recipe. There was some shopping to do...

I still needed to buy a lemon for fresh lemon juice, unsalted butter, a pastry blender, and two pounds of sour cherries. It wasn’t until I reached the grocery store that I realized that I wasn’t sure what a sour cherry was and there were none at Tom Thumb. In desperation, I called my mom and asked if I could substitute sweet cherries for sour and just not add sugar, she said that it seemed like I should be able to.

I get home and check online to see if I would be able to. The good news is I could, the bad news is that I would have to add more lemon juice. I was hoping that one lemon would be enough at this point.

The dough for the pie crust was easy to make. It was my first time to use a pastry blender, so I wasn’t 100% sure of how to use it, but it seemed simple enough. Just up and down, up and down until crumbs are formed in the batter. Now I had some weight time while the dough cooled in the refrigerator.

An hour later, I pull half of the dough out. The half for the bottom of the pie, the top wouldn’t come until later. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea for me to start baking as late as I did, but I started to come a little unraveled. It didn’t help that my dad’s dog Lacey was over for the weekend and wouldn’t leave me alone. She was standing at my feet just waiting for crumbs to fall on the floor or for me to give her food. Who can say for sure. Either way, she was practically pushing me over, which is not helpful when you are rolling dough.

For some reason the dough was just too sticky. I’m not sure if it was just too warm or there wasn’t enough flour in it, but it did not want to roll or be put in my nice pie dish. It got to the point where I was on the verge of tears. I decided that it was time to ask my mom for help.

The only other time that I, or anybody else, had used our roller was several years ago when making gingerbread men which ended up falling apart...needless to say, I was not at all skilled with the roller. My mom taught me several tricks, the most important being wax paper. Let’s face it, rolling the flat dough onto the roller and then unrolling it onto the pie dish is no easy feat. My mom essentially saved my pie.

At this point, I am very ornery. I hit a baking low for myself, I kicked Lacey and pushed her out of the kitchen after yelling at her. The best move I made that whole night was to put her, and my other two hungry dogs, outside. I decide that I should stop for the night. I put the pie dish, with the pie crust already in it thanks to my mom, into the freezer. Looking back, it probably have been smarter to put it in the refrigerator, but it all worked out in the end.

At the beginning of the second day, after a good night’s rest, I am ready to once again tackle the beast that is my pie. This is when I realize that I am not sure how to pit cherries. I look up two ways to do this: use a parring knife to cut the cherries in half and manually extract the pits or use a cherry pitter to push the pits out. After attempting the former on a single cherry, I decide that it would take way too much of my day to manually extract every single cherry pit out of two pounds of cherries. I decide it is time to invest $10 in a cherry pitter. It was time to go on a morning visit to Target.

I get home and my mom, curious of what exactly I bought this time for the kitchen, asks for a demonstration. Excited to use it also, I gladly show her. While it may be a very simple process, it is exciting to see for the first time. It is our new favorite kitchen tool.

I pit enough cherries for the pie to discover that I actually bought too many. The bright side is that I now have about a pound of cherries to snack on over the next few days. It was time to pull the remaining crust to cover the pie. The second time proved to be so much easier. It worked flawlessly.

I baked the pie. I am still adjusting to the new convection oven that we had installed just before Thanksgiving. It is so strange in comparison to a normal oven. You set it at a lower temperature for a shorter period of time. I would just use the bottom oven which is a normal oven, but it is such a hassle to get that low to put it in. I am always so afraid that I am not going to cook something right in the new oven, this Sunday was no different.

It wasn’t until that afternoon that I was able to try the pie. The crust was cooked perfectly, flaky but still keeping its shape. My mom cuts into the pie to find out exactly how juicy the cherries were. My pie turned into more of a soup then a pie. While it was so sweet and the best cherry pie that I have ever had, it was really strange to have to eat my pie out of a bowl with a spoon.

Next time I just need to remember to put more corn starch than indicated in the pie. That way we will be able to eat it like a pie should be eaten. Also, not all of the pits escaped from the cherries before the baking process. We have found two so far, hopefully no one will chip a tooth.