Page 15 - United States of Pie

GETTING STARTED

For the most part, you won’t find too many unusual ingredients in this
cookbook. We’re making pie here, not building rocket ships! You may
even be able to make a pie or two without having to set foot in a

market. Now that’s what I call American ingenuity! But there are a
few things to note.

FLOUR

The flour in these recipes is all-purpose, unless otherwise noted. All-
purpose flour is a blend of hard and soft wheat that gives pie dough
a reliable structure. It is sturdy yet tender, and easy to work with. It
comes in bleached and unbleached varieties, and in this book you
can use either. Whole wheat flour, which you will find in the Whole

Wheat Pie Dough recipe is simply flour that is milled with the germ
and the bran still attached. It tends to be stiffer and coarser than all-
purpose flour, and has a nuttier flavor.

GIVE ME SOME SUGAR

It seems that nowadays there are almost as many ways to sweeten
desserts as there are desserts to bake. I am a purist. You won’t find
a recipe in this book that uses a difficult-to-find sweetener, and I
never use artificial sweeteners—they just leave a metallic aftertaste
in your mouth (lick a penny!). But here are some sugars, and an
explanation of what makes each so sweet.

Granulated sugar: This is the standard sugar, also called
table sugar. The most common form of sugar, it is essentially