Page 101 - United States of Pie

piece from the pie plate, only to find that the bottom crust is as
damp as a wet tissue. Your filling has not thickened sufficiently.
Your pie might still taste delicious, but let’s just go ahead and say

it: it has lost the power to impress your dinner guests. It has
happened to the best of us.
There are a few ways to handle the problem of thickening.
Some are useful, some not so much. Most of the fruit pies in this
book are relatively runny. I enjoy eating a slightly messy,
imperfect pie—there is beauty in the homemade aspect. If you
decide that you want your pies to be denser or even gushier, by

all means toy with the amounts of thickener. You will find
exactly what you want.

PRECOOKING THE FILLING

When making a fruit pie, some bakers will tell you to cook all or
a part of the filling prior to assembling and baking the pie. This
thickens the juice, making a denser syrup. You won’t see any
precooked fillings in this book, though. To my mind, a fruit pie
should be bright and as unadulterated as possible: just fruit,

sugar, a bit of spice, and some added thickener.

MACERATING

Some bakers add a few extra tablespoons of sugar to particularly
juicy slices of fruit, such as peaches or strawberries, and leave the
fruit to sit for 15 to 30 minutes. The fruit releases a substantial
amount of juice as it rests, which the baker then drains off and
discards before baking. This has always seemed a bit
counterintuitive to me. To throw away the essence of the fruit is

to degrade your pie. However, there are exceptions to every rule:
see the Sour Cherry Pie, where the potent elixir that results from
concentrating the juices is used in a variety of ways and not just
discarded.

ADDING STARCH