Recipe
American Apple Pie
Yield: 8
Ingredients
For the pie crust
- 4 cups (560 g) all-purpose flour (plus more for rolling)
- 1/4 cup (50 g) sugar
- 2 tsp fine salt
- 1 cup (230 g) unsalted butter, very cold
- 3/4-1 cup cold water
- 1 tsp cider vinegar (optional)
For the filling
- 2-3 pounds (8 cups) thinly sliced or small diced apples*
- 3/4 cup (150g) brown sugar
- 1 tbsp (16g) lemon juice
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg (optional)
- 1/8 tsp ground cardamom (optional)
- pinch of ground ginger (optional)
- pinch of allspice (optional)
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp unsalted butter
- 2 tbsp cornstarch
For the egg wash
- 1 egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tablespoon milk
Instructions
Make the pie crust
- (before you deal with the crust, thinly slice the apples and toss with brown sugar & lemon juice, cover and set aside to macerate)
- Grate your frozen butter on the large side of a box grater and hold in the refrigerator or freezer.
- In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, and salt until well mixed.
- Add cold butter and toss with flour. Using your hands, break down pieces of butter by rubbing them into the flour until your mixture resembles coarse cornmeal.
- Add 1⁄2 cup cold water and 1 tsp apple cider vinegar. Mix with a wooden spoon or your hand until a rough dough is formed. Add additional water as need, 1 tablespoon at a time, until you have few to no dry bits of dough.
- Turn out onto a lightly floured counter and knead briefly just until a cohesive dough is formed. Flatten into a rectangle and fold. Repeat fold 2 more times.
- Divide into two equal pieces, flatten to about 1 1⁄2 inch thickness, wrap with plastic and chill in fridge for at least 30 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 400F. Cover a baking stone or sheet pan in foil and place in oven, with rack set to bottom third position.
- After dough as chilled, dust work surface with flour and roll one disk of dough to about 1/8-1/4 inch thickness, taking care to lift the dough and redust underneath to prevent sticking. Always roll from the middle out to the edge, stopping right before the edge.
- Ease crust into pie pan, making sure not to stretch the dough. Trim excess. Hold in the refrigerator or freezer.
Make the filling
- Drain macerated juice off the apples into a saucepan.
- Stir in spices, salt & butter. Simmer and reduce to a syrup.
- Toss apples with cornstarch and then fold apple syrup back into the apples.
- Pour into pie pan. Dot with butter.
- Roll out second disk of pie dough. Moisten rim of bottom crust with a wet finger. Place top crust over apples. Seal. Trim. Crimp.
- Cut vents.
- Whisk together 1 egg, 1 egg yolk and 1 tablespoon of milk and brush over crust (this is optional, but makes for a much prettier pie)
- Bake until a butter knife inserted through a vent shows apples are cooked and juices are bubbling up throught the vents. About 75 minutes.
- Check on the pie around the 40 minutes mark. Shield the crust edges with foil if they are over-browning.
Notes:
Spices are personal. Use any combination you'd like, or even just 1 to 1 1/2 tsp of an "apple pie spice" blend if you have one. Cinnamon is pretty quintessential, but after that, there are any number of combinations of spices you can use. Omit any spice you don't care for or don't keep on hand.
