Hurricane Pie

Ready for pie

I am a lucky man.

For the first time since my post-graduate-school years in Rhode Island, I go off to work every morning with a bouncing step. I am the bread-mix man - what joy to be making something that gets so many people happy!

Of course, my work - and to some degree my joy - has been interrupted by Hurricane Sandy. As frequent readers know, my home and business are in New Jersey - the storm’s epicenter. But in this arena too I am lucky. Within a block of my home, trees are down, power is out and buildings are damaged, but we’ve fared very well. We lost power for four hours and that was all.

Even a media decision that Leslie and I stuck with despite the derision of friends - to eschew cable in favor of limited (but free!) digital channels - has proved lucky. TV cables are down along with power lines, and we are thus one of the few families here with constant news and entertainment access.

I cannot say I escaped unscathed. I’ve not been able to get to my shop yet, so I have no idea if the roof is intact. Fortunately, my flour blends are spoilage-resistant. Doubly fortunate, I stocked up my house with packaged mixes, so I can ship from here.

Right now we’re suffering through a gasoline supply crises, but that won’t last forever. So, this is not a complaint - just a comment: I’ve got a mild case of cabin fever.

Baking - the route to mental health

I do know the way to attenuate cabin fever, however: bake!

I’ve been plotting a complicated sweet treat for the past three weeks: a pie with a twist. But first a backstory:

I love apple pies, as you my gentle readers know, but only pies made with the right apples: Northern Spy, Gold Rush or Lodi. In July, I purchased and dehydrated a nice stack of Lodi and was looking forward to doing the same with large quantities of Northern Spy once they came in. Last week I headed to my favorite country store, Race Farm Market, with a duel mission: to see if they’d like to carry my bread mixes and to pick up some Northern Spy. 

Owner Devin Race was enthusiastic about my mixes (YEA!) and Race’s now carries them, but alas she had no Northern Spy. “We’re sold out,” she told me. “People have figured out how good a pie apple they are.”

Well, damn! I’d more than done my part in that. Now I wish I’d kept my fingers off the keyboard. (Gold Rush come in during November, so there’s hope.)

Fortunately I have all those Lodi dehydrates. Lodi are intense and tart, so I began to wonder, what happens when they’re ground up and incorporated into a crust, making a kind of inverted apple pie? 

I decided to find out.

But first I had to consider the filling. Did there even have to be a filling?

Pies with foil "skirts" to prevent over-browning of the crust

I mulled it over. A pie is great because of its inherent contrasts: tart vs sweet; rich vs fruity; crunchy vs mushy. My biggest critique of my own pies is the way the filling usually wets (and therefore defeats) the crunchy crust. However, just plain crunchy crust - regardless of the flavors which might be in that crust - didn’t sound appealing. Yes, there did have to be a filling. A very rich, very sweet, very creamy one. Something to complement and contrast with the tart Lodi in the crust. How about ...... Cinnamon custard....!!!

I had no idea if there even was such a thing as cinnamon custard but I was certain Google would tell me. 

Indeed it turned out that there are thousands of variations of cinnamon custard. Thanks to the Martha Stewart version I was able to make a spicy but not overwhelming treat. And thanks to a quirk of life-under-Sandy, (my local groceries are all out of dairy products) I used ingredients I normally wouldn’t: condensed, sweetened milk and a big dollop of leftover creme fraiche, both of which added interesting flavors and obviated any need for more sugar.

And now a warning: I’ve had lots of time on my hands the past few days to play around with my favorite idea fixé: flaky pastry. The technique described and illustrated below is a low-impact (that is, not overly laborious) version of classic puff pastry and produces a wonderfully flaky pie crust. If you already have a crust recipe you’re satisfied with, stick with it. Just pull out 25% - 33% of the flour (by weight) and replace with dried apples and walnuts using the preparation instructions below.

In this recipe I use both weight and volume measures. The former are more accurate, but once small volumes of fine powders, or messy things, like condensed milk, get in the act, my kitchen scale is insufficiently precise - and I don’t like risking its electronic innards over spilled milk. 

Finally, if you are uninterested in the recipe please skip to the end and read the last paragraph. It’s an update on post-Sandy and my plans for the future of this blog.

Hurricane Pie

Yield: Two small (4” diameter) pies

Ingredients for the crust:

64 grams Bette Hagman Featherlite flour

7 grams dehydrated apples, preferable Lodi, Gold Rush or Northern Spy

10 grams shelled, chopped walnuts

1 tsp sugar

1/8 tsp Xanthan gum

Pinch salt

1/2 stick (55 grams) unsweetened butter

7 grams rice vinegar

20 grams water

Ingredients for the filling:

1/8 cup heavy cream

1/8 cup condensed, sweetened milk

3/4 cup whole milk

1/2 cinnamon stick

1/2 vanilla pod

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon, divided

1 TBLS Creme fraiche (or condensed, sweetened milk)

1 large egg

2 large egg yolks

Pinch salt

Procedure:

Make the crust: 

Chop walnuts and apple slices into chunks about 1/4” in diameter. Place into a spice grinder (a coffee grinder works well) and grind until the consistency of coarse salt. You may have to stop and scrape the sides occasionally. In a medium bowl, toss the ground apples and walnuts with the Featherlite, xanthan gum, sugar and salt. Stir well. Place bowl into refrigerator to chill.

Once flour blend is cold, mix vinegar and water and place into freezer. Remove flour blend from refrigerator. Cut butter into thin slices and toss into the flour blend. Using your fingertips, press each butter slice into a very thin layer. 

Lay several sheets of plastic wrap on the countertop, forming an “X”. Turn out the flour+butter onto this, scraping any chunks that adhere to the bowl. Form into a loose mound with a cavity on top. Pour the ice water into the cavity, then toss the sides of the mound onto the ice water, covering it. Pat down the mound, then turn up one side of the plastic wrap to cover the flour. Pat and press the plastic wrap, flattening and shaping the flour into a rough rectangle about 1/2 inch thick.

Peel back the plastic, scraping off any layers that adhere. Fold up the dough in thirds, letter-style. It will be rough and difficult to handle. Recover with plastic and pat/thump/press into another rectangle that is a 90-degree-different orientation from the first. Uncover and fold this rectangle, which should work a little bit easier. Repeat the folding, patting, and refolding until the liquid is well incorporated - this will take 5 to 7 cycles. Wrap dough in plastic and refrigerate at least 1 hour.

When dough is thoroughly chilled, remove from refrigerator. Preheat an oven to 425 F. Roll dough into a slab that is 1/8” to 1/4” thick. This will be easier on a well-floured wooden surface. You may have to fill in cracks with chunks of dough and you may need to slip a spatula or bench knife under the dough from time to time to keep it from sticking to the wood. Try to form a long oval that can be cut into two circles. Pick up each circle (a pizza peel or “giant spatula” works well here) and place onto 4” pyrex bowls/pans. Press dough into pans and crimp edges. Blind bake 12 minutes. Remove from oven, cover crimped edges with tin foil, and blind bake another 5 - 10 minutes, until crust within pie bowls is lightly browned. Remove from heat and allow to cool thoroughly. Keep the aluminum foil “skirts” in place.

Make the filling: 

Scrape the outer layer from the vanilla pod and set pod aside. Place cream, condensed milk, milk, creme fraiche (if using), cinnamon stick, 1/8 tsp of the ground cinnamon and vanilla pod scrapings into a small saucepan. Place over medium heat and bring to a gentle boil. Cover pan and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely.

Heat oven to 325 F. 

Remove cinnamon stick. Mixture may be strained (optional). Place mixture into a small bowl. Add 1/8 tsp ground cinnamon, egg yolks, and egg. Whisk until completely blended. Ladle mixture into pie shells, being careful not to let liquid reach the skirts. Liquid should reach only 1/2 way up the shell.

Place pies into oven and bake 20 minutes. Check and continue baking if necessary. Pies are done if the liquid jiggles slightly. Remove from heat. Custard will continue to set while pies cool. 

Serve while still warm. :-) 

And now the Sandy update: For the time being I am stuck in Weehawken, primarily because I refuse to join a mile-long line for gasoline. This is not just a convenience decision: the mood here is turning ugly. If I wanted bad vibrations I’d not have retired from the community college. Fortunately I can take a train to the town where my shop is, and walk the rest of the way to work. I’ll probably do this within the next day or two if power is back and the gas lines haven’t abated.

Regarding this blog: long posts like the one you’ve just slogged through are becoming increasingly difficult to justify. Luce’s Gluten-Free Artisan Bread is at present a one-man operation, and every time-bite used for blogging is time removed from the biz. I don’t want to drop this blog but I don’t want to wait weeks between posts either. Therefore I’m going to make the entries shorter and more diverse. Recipes will be rare. 

I hope you continue to read me. I seriously doubt that anyone depends on my recipes for total life entertainment, but if you do, send me an email and I’ll figure out  a way to get new ones to you.

Stay safe, stay dry, buy Luce’s. That’s all I can say today.

Progress and Pie

Today's puzzle - what the $#@!! is going on here??? (see below)

At the present moment, writing about my business is rather like reporting the function of a healthy immune system. Things are humming along, with all the organs in the background doing their jobs. A comforting picture, but boring.

The town of Berkeley Heights New Jersey has my building permit application. My plumber is waiting in the wings, as are my equipment and raw materials suppliers. My packaging designer is on her third draft, my business partner is reviewing the packaging copy, and I’m waiting for several vendors to call me with estimates. I have finished one thing: a short promotional video, embedded here: 

So, clever music and a pretty actress (that’s my wife, Leslie) aside, there’s not much of interest going on with my business, gentle readers. So I’m going to write about pie.

Pic crust tools and ingredients chilling in the 'fridge

For the past year or so I’ve been chiding Gary Lincoff, author of The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, whenever he posts a pie photograph on his Facebook page. “You need to make a gluten-free version!” I nag. At which I can just about hear a big chunk of his followers saying, “Yuk!”

It’s easy to wince at the concept of gluten-free pie crusts if you’ve never tasted a good one. However, since half the effort of making a wheat flour crust consists of preventing gluten from over-developing, removing gluten from the formula doesn't create much loss.

A scant eighth teaspoon of Xanthan gum - crucial ingredient for GF crust

I’ve been rolling pie crusts since I was 4 or 5. Which is not to say I’m any kind of baking expert; I’m not. I do love pie, however, and am quick to judge crust quality. (Point of historical fact: my mother’s relatives, the Mallery family, used to have reunions every August. There was silent but intense competition among the women as to who made the best pie. Which was emphatically not about the filling, but the crust.) So when I say I’ve got a good gluten-free crust formula, please take me seriously.

Half a stick of butter (4 tablespoons)

Although I’ve blogged about pies before, it’s time to write a very specific recipe if for no other reason that Mr. Lincoff has come out with a new book, The Joy of Foraging. He’s so good at finding wild edibles there’s sure to be Facebook posts all summer regarding pies made with found fruits. I’m thinking that people like me (ie - celiac sufferers) deserve to enjoy what nature offers in final, sugar-drenched, baked form too. So here goes.

Flour

A great deal of what happens in the ideal pie crust has to do with how the ingredients are handled. Therefore, the type of flour is not totally critical. That said, I believe two things are important about flour: it needs to be Easy, and it needs to taste Good.

Unfortunately there is no single gluten-free grain flour that will make great piecrust. All GF flours are blends - grain flour + starch flour + dough enhancers/gluten substitutes. You can buy pre-mixed flours, and that’s great, but in my house there’s so many flours I can make special blends for different types of pies (more on that, below). The one thing all my blends have in common? They’re based on a simple formula: Bette Hagman’s Featherlite blend.

The late Ms. Hagman came up with this mixture decades ago. In my opinion it can’t be beat for sweets, although I sometimes modify it. The recipe: 1 cup white rice flour, 1 cup corn starch, 1 cup tapioca starch, 1 tablespoon potato flour. 

There’s an easy way to blend these dry ingredients: put them into a big ziplock bag, leave a good amount of air,  zip the bag closed and shake it like mad. Depending on the size of your bag (and your willingness to clean up should the seal fail) you can make rather large quantities this way.

Once you’ve got the flour you can focus on handling, the first step to which is, chill everything.

Thin slices of cold butter

A pie crust should be nicely flaky. To accomplish that, unsalted butter is the best shortening. Butter contains water, which, under the right circumstances, changes quickly to steam and lifts surrounding dough. As this is going on the butter melts, coating the flour grains. In combination with the naturally occurring sugars in the grains, the fat-soaked flour turns crispy. 

That’s a lot to happen all at once - or at least in fast sequence - so to make all the pieces play together it’s critical to prep them. Which is where temperature comes in. You’ll want the butter to be flat sheets, thin enough to melt fast but thick enough to perform lift. And, you’ll want the butter to be solid until the instant the crust hits the oven. That’s what keeps the most water in the butter and makes the tastiest flakes. Therefore, you want the butter to be cold throughout the crust-making process.

I keep butter, flour, dough enhancers, a wooden work surface, a bench knife and a thick ceramic mixing bowl in the refrigerator, waiting for fresh fruit. Once a harvest comes in I figure out how much pie Leslie and I can eat, and get working. (BTW - that photo at the top of the page? When I make crust on a hot day I chill the rolling board further with whatever is in the top of my freezer.)

Preparation

Ready to be chopped and ground

Making pie crust is yet another example of the superiority of weighing, rather than dry measuring, ingredients. Keep in mind that digital kitchen scales are now quite cheap. I see them in pharmacies for $10.

The basic weight ratio of pie crust ingredients is: 3 parts flour, 2 parts shortening, 1 part ice water.  Experience tells me I can make a quarter-sheet of mini-pies  - enough to last about a week in my household - with a crust recipe founded on 1/2 stick of butter. If I reach into the ’fridge and find 1/3 stick or 2/3 or 5/8 stick, it hardly matters. I just weigh the butter; all else follows. If you’re bad at math like me, divide the butter weight in half. That gives you the ice water weight. Multiply the ice water weight by three. That gives you the flour weight.

You can make a decent pie crust using the ingredients above, if you use good technique. However I do some modifications that work wonders. For a half butter stick quantity, I add two teaspoons of rice vinegar to the water (weighing both together), and substitute 1/4 the flour with almond meal, which I make by coarse chopping almonds, then running them through my spice grinder until they threaten to become almond butter. (Admittedly it is easier to buy almond flour, which is available at many grocery stores.) The flour should also get a scant 1/8 tsp xanthan gum, a pinch of salt, and two teaspoons of sugar. 

Butter shavings in cold flour

If I’m making a pumpkin, squash, sweet potato, pecan or “Derby” pie, I use teff flour in my featherlite blend instead of rice flour. Dark teff is earthier and rye-like; ivory teff is spicier and can have notes of fish (try it for a seafood quiche).

Technique

This is the crucial part, and the only kitchen task I try to accomplish at speed. Keeping the ingredients cold is important, and a bit challenging, especially in the summer.

Put the chilled rolling board on your work counter. Drape a couple of layers of plastic wrap - big, generous pieces at least 18” long - over the board. Set the cold bowl and a bench knife on the board. Stick the water + vinegar in the freezer.  Unwrap the butter. Measure flour, sugar, xanthan gum and salt into the bowl, and stir to mix.

The well awaits

Using the cold bench knife, slice the butter across its end into pieces @ 1/16” thick, tossing into the flour as you cut. From time to time stir the flour with your fingertips so that the butter chunks get coated and stay cold. When you have all the butter cut, toss the flour/butter lightly to distribute chunks evenly.

Using just your fingertips, press each piece of butter through the flour and against the side of the bowl to squeeze it into a big flat flake. Toss from time to time. When all or most of the butter is pressed, overturn the bowl onto the plastic sheets. Gather the blend into a mound and form a well in the center. Retrieve the ice water, punch through the thin skin of ice on top, and pour it into the well. 

First fold. Note flakes of butter and oozing water

Toss the flour that forms the “hillsides” down onto the well until the wet dough/water is covered. Pick up one end of the plastic wrap, then fold it onto the other end, enclosing the dough. Press and pound until the mix is 1/2” to 3/4” thick. Unwrap the top layer of plastic, scraping any dough that sticks back onto the dough mass, and use the bench knife to fold the dough into thirds, like a business letter.

At this moment you are probably wondering what kind of madman I am, calling what’s on your work surface “dough”. It’s a dry-on-the-outside, sticky-in-the-middle, water-oozing, semi-rectangular mass. But bear with me.

Third fold. Slowly, the mess becomes dough.

Close up the plastic again and press/pound the dough flat, trying to work the “package” so that when you fold it the next time the folds will be at 90 degrees to the last set. 

Repeat these cover-pound-uncover-fold-re-cover actions 4 to 6 times, until the dough begins to look like dough. Then wrap it up in the plastic and stick it back in the ‘fridge, where it needs to rest 6 or more hours before being rolled.

And that’s really all there is to it - with but one additional thought: When you roll the dough you’ll get better results if your rolling board is chilled and coated with a rubbed-in tablespoon or two of superfine brown rice flour.

Ready for refrigeration. Several hours of rest will allow all the water
to be absorbed and the dough will be ready to roll.

I’m not going to suggest pie fillings. That’s best left to folks like Gary, who seem to have more ideas for wild edibles than I ever will. But I will tell you my absolute favorite: wild huckleberries. I wish I had some right now!