I find pie baking to be very intimidating. Rolling out the dough is particularly daunting to me. But who better to teach me than Erin Jeanne McDowell? I mean, she wrote the book on pie – literally! Her YouTube series Bake It Up a Notch is a masterclass in baking and her second book, The Book on Pie, is an encyclopedia of everything you need to make a perfect pie. Erin provides both classic and unique pies with just about every dough you could think of – doughs with different flours, savory doughs, doughs for decorating, press-in cookie doughs, flaky doughs… You get it. By the end of this month, I’m hoping to be a pie-baking master! (Or at least, not cry every time I try to roll the dough out.) 🥧
November Cookbook: The Book on Pie: Everything You Need to Know to Bake Perfect Pies by Erin Jeanne McDowell
Apple is in my top three favorite pie flavors, so I had to start with the fancy apple pie (pg. 197)! For the crust, I went with the golden cheese pie dough (pg. 57) – and before you say anything, yes, apple and cheddar is a delicious combination.
Pie doughs always make me nervous, so I gave myself an entire day to work on it. Unfortunately, I had little success. Everything was going well until I tried to par-bake it; the butter melted out, I didn’t have enough pie weights, and then to top it all off, I forgot about it in the oven and it burnt. 🤦🏻♀️ I continued with the filling anyway, which was easy enough – sliced apples tossed in butter, sugar and boiled apple cider. Yum! To hide my ugly burnt crust, I also made the honey meringue topping (pg. 118) to decorate. I even torched it to add a further distraction.
I wish I could say it tasted good at least, but I ended up scooping out the meringue and apple filling and eating that like some insane salad and then tossing the crust. Sad. (How perfect do those toasted meringue swirls look though?)
Since I’m not going to make more than one pie a week, I looked up some of Erin’s other recipes on NYT Cooking to try. This week, I went with these cheddar beer bread rolls because I have a child-like fascination with beer bread. The first time I tried beer bread was at a family friend’s backyard BBQ as a kid. I just remember thinking, “Wow, this has beer in it.” My little mind was blown. Anyway, these were pretty simple! Especially when using instant yeast. Ultimately, I wasn’t crazy about the flavor but that could be because I picked a fancy local beer. I think a good ‘ole Coors Light would have been better.
Thanks for reading, sweeties! 🍎