My first pie for the end of autumn

It’s nearing the end of autumn: the temperatures are dropping, I can see snow on the forecast and I can no longer find so many lingonberries and bilberries behind the house. There are still lots of plums at the local store though and before they too disappear, I felt like making my first plum pie!

This wasn’t just my first plum pie, it’s my first pie. It was partly for this reason that I didn’t anticipate how using Graham wheat flour would affect the crust.

Graham flour is a whole wheat flour. Due to being unrefined, it has more protein, fiber and large coarsly ground pieces of wheat kernel. The filling was a success, but the pastry was dense, quite crumbly and had a darker colour after baking. Nevertheless, it did have a nice “rustic” look and even tasted alright! After that, I baked another plum pie with plain white flour which resulted in a lighter, flakier pastry. I also used both these flours in another recipe to make no-knead bread.

The following is the method I used to make my first plum pies. I would continue to use this method as the pie tasted so good!

Ingredients

Pie crust

• 2.5 cups flour
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 225g cold butter
• 120mL ice water

Water, flour, ice cubes, butter, sugar and salt to make the pie crust.

Pie filling

• 800g plums (whole)
• ²/₅ cup sugar
• 1/5 cup cornstarch
• 1.5 tsp vanilla

Egg wash

• 1 egg
• Sprinkling of sugar

Vanilla, cornstarch, sugar and plums to make the pie filling.

Method

Pie crust

1. Start by mixing the flour, sugar and salt together in a bowl.


2. Then, chop the butter into small cubes and add into the bowl with the other ingredients.


3. Cut the butter into the flour. This can be done easily with a pastry cutter, a fork or two knives (or two forks as I did!). The aim is to get pea sized pieces of flour coated with butter (and no doubt butter coated with flour).


Cut the butter into the flour.

4. Add ice into the water and wait to melt a bit. Measure out about 120mL and pour a little of this ice water into the flour mixture at a time, mixing as you go. Stop when the dough is sticky, but not wet, and starts coming together easily (this is about 120mL).


Pour ice water into the butter and flour mixture.

5. Put the dough onto a lightly floured surface and, using floured hands, fold onto itself. If you do this on baking paper, you can use the paper to lift and fold the dough onto itself. Form a mass, or ball, that you can roughly cut in half. It does not need to be a perfect ball as you don’t want to overwork the dough.
   
   A note about the cold chunks of butter:
   Using cold butter to create pea-sized chunks and not over mixing helps create a tender (not chewy) and flakier pastry. This happens because of at least two reasons. When water comes into contact with the proteins glutenin and gliadin in flour, gluten is formed which leads to a chewier texture. The butter acts as a barrier around the flour, preventing too much water coming into contact with flour. If you over mix, or the butter is able to melt and mix completely with the flour, the water you add and the water in the butter will cause more gluten to be formed giving it a more chewy texture instead of a flaky one. The second reason this method creates flaky pastry is that when the butter remains in chunks it allows for pockets of steam to be generated by the evaporating water in the butter. These steam pockets physically push apart the dough making it flaky.




I probably over worked the dough. It was not necessary to be this smooth and homogenous looking.

6. Cut the dough in half. One half is for the bottom of the pie and one half is for the top.


7. Press down each half to make flatter. This makes it easier to roll out later. Wrap them up and keep in the fridge while making the pie filling.


Pastry dough pucks made with Graham wheat flour.



This is the dough made from plain white flour.



These pieces of dough are made from plain white flour. I also made an effort to fold the dough and not over work it (I didn’t press it into a ball).



You can see the layers here of the folded dough.

Pie filling

1. Wash and take out the plum seeds. Cut half of them into quarters and half into sixths. This is not necessary but adds for slightly different textures.


2. Put all the ingredients - plums, sugar, cornstarch and vanilla - into a bowl and mix.

Assembling the pie

1. Take one of the dough pucks out of the fridge and put onto a lightly floured surface. Roll out the dough gently to create . Line a pie dish with the rolled out pastry.


Pastry made with Graham flour.



Pastry made with plain white flour.



Graham flour pastry.



Plain white flour pastry.

2. Take the other dough puck out of the fridge and roll it out as well. This will be used to create the lattice on top of the pie.


3. Cut the pastry into long ribbons. You can choose the width of these ribbons to create whatever style of lattice you like.


4. Fill the pie dish with the plum filling and start laying the ribbons of dough on the top. Start by laying them all in the same direction with some space in between them.




5. Flip back every second ribbon on itself, about half way. Then place another ribbon in the middle of the pie, perpendicular to all the others.


6. Lay the pieces of pastry ribbons back down so they are laying flat over the new piece of pastry.


7. Repeat steps 5 and 6, flipping back alternating ribbons, until the edge of the pie is reached. Then repeat for the other side of the pie.








8. Trim any overhanging bits of the lattice and then pinch the lattice and the pie edge together.


9. Beat one egg and use for an egg wash over the pie crust. Sprinkle a bit of sugar over the crust as well.


10. Preheat the oven to 190ºC, then bake the pie for around an hour. The top should be browned and the plum filling will be bubbling when it’s done.


The pie made with Graham flour pastry.



The pie made with plain white flour pastry.

11. Let the pie cool so the filling can set, otherwise it will still be runny. We served it with some cream and both of the pies were delicious, however, we did prefer the one with the pastry made of plain white flour.