Photo Credit: Jerome Callender
This week was a continuation of last week's class, we made the pie filling, rolled out the dough and learned to assemble it all.
Arriving early to the class, I started peeling the apples, coring and quartering before the first demo by the instructor. Although the class starts at 6:15p, the instructor expects everyone in class by at least 5:45, so that there is time to get all the equipment you require to your station, scale all of your ingredients and be ready for the first demo at 6:15p sharp. There wasn't too much scaling required this week, so that went quickly.
The first demo showed us how to slice the already quartered apples, fairly thin, a little less than a quarter inch, zest a lemon and juice it. She explained when apples are bruised, it is ok to continue to use them if the bruising does not go too deep, as it shouldn't affect the flavour, but anything deeper should be discarded. The lemon zest was added for flavour and the juice to keep the apples from browning.
After mixing all the apple pie filling ingredients, it is key to let it sit for about 15-20 minutes to let all of the moisture from the apples drain. The last time I made an apple pie, I made this mistake and ended up with a soupy watery pie. During this resting time for the filling, we rolled out our pie dough from the previous week.
Tips when rolling out the dough: do not over work the dough! Once you start rolling it out, do not keep rerolling to get it perfect, as you will lose all the fat pockets and therefore lose all of the flakiness.
Straining out the filling and placing it in the bottom pie crust, it is important to egg wash the edge of the crust before placing on the top, to get a good seal for the pie. The only place we left for the steam to come out was a little hole in the top center of the crust. We egg washed the entire top to help it brown and used excess pie dough for garnish, I made a little apple :)
