There are a million apple pie recipes online, and people argue whether they should go with an all-shortening or all-butter crust, or even a crust with a combination of the two. I used to be a half-butter, half-shortening guy, myself. But over they years, I’ve become an all-butter guy, because quite frankly, shortening is nasty. And butter…is butter!
I choose to bake the pie the day before serving it. And I prepare the dough the day before that. That way, it has time to rest in the fridge overnight. When you’re ready to bake, remove the dough from the fridge and work with it as cold as you can. If you thaw it too much, you’ll lose the magic of the little butter chunks scattered through the dough.
For the dough…
2 1/2 cups all-purpose organic flour (I like King Arthur)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup butter, chilled and diced into cubes
1/2 cup very cold ice water
You can mix the dough ingredients by hand in a bowl, but I prefer a food processor.
Combine the flour, salt and sugar in the food processor and give it a quick pulse to mix. Drop the cubes of butter into the flour mixture, and then pulse the processor until the dough mixture resembles coarse crumbs, and the butter is reduced to pea-sized bits.
Add 1/4 cup of the water, and run the processor. Keep adding a little water at a time, and as soon as the dough forms a ball and pulls away from the sides of the processor bowl, stop! You don’t want to overwork the dough.
Remove the dough to a floured surface and knead it into a ball. Cut the ball in half, and roll each half into a thick, round pancake about an inch thick. wrap these tightly with plastic wrap and place them in the fridge until you’re ready to bake.
For the pie filling…
3 lbs. Granny Smith apples, peeled and sliced into 1/4″ thick slices
1/2 cup butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose organic flour
1/3 cup apple cider
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 teaspoons real vanilla extract
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
Preheat the oven to 425.
Remove the dough from the fridge. While it’s warming up, prepare the apples.
Peel and slice the apples into 1/4″ wide pieces. (I like to cut some a little thinner and some a little thicker, so I get different textures of apple when the pie has baked.) Place them in a large bowl.
Melt the butter in a saucepan, and add the flour. Whisk well to make a roux. Add the juice, both sugars, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg. Bring it to a low boil, stirring constantly, then remove from the heat.
Pour the contents of the saucepan into the large bowl with the apples, saving about 1/4 cup butter-sugar sauce for later. Mix the sauce with the apples really well, making sure they’re completely coated.
Unwrap one of the dough pieces. On a lightly floured surface, roll it out large enough to fit the bottom and sides of a 9″ pie pan. Let it hang about a 1/2″ over the top edge of the pan, for crimping later.
Carefully transfer the apple mixture into the pie pan, making sure you get every little bit of that butter-sugar sauce in there. The apples will form a large mound. don’t worry…they’ll cook down.
Unwrap the other piece of dough and roll it out so that it fits over the top of the mound of apples. Tuck the excess edges of the upper crust under the overlapping bottom crust, pinching the two halves together, making as tight a seal around the pie as you can. (Don’t cut any of that crust away…use it! It’s delicious!) Cut several slots in the top of the crust to let steam out while the pie cooks.
Take that 1/4 cup of reserved butter-sugar sauce, add a little water to it, and brush it all over the top of the crust, brushing evenly over the entire crust.
Place the pie on a baking sheet and bake it at 425 for about 15 minutes. Then drop the oven temperature to 350 and bake for another 50 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and crisp. If it looks like the edges of your pie are browning too quickly, tent around the edges loosely with foil. Remember, ovens vary!
Let the pie cool completely. I prefer to let it cool overnight, to be served the next day. We like to serve it with good-quality vanilla ice cream.
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