This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, from the cookbook Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, is Double Crusted Blueberry Pie, can be found on pages 361-363, and was chosen by Amy from South in Your Mouth.
Mark's dessert of choice is always pie, so I knew he would be looking forward to this week's baked goods. The crust went together easily, as did the blueberry filling. (I have found Dorie's recipes to be exceptionally well thought out and detailed.) One of my favorite things about baking in the kitchen is that I get to use my Granny Franny's bowls, measuring cups, rolling pin, etc. as when she died, I got to have them. It is so nice using them and remembering all the wonderful times I had through the years, cooking and baking things in her kitchen in Keota, Iowa, and using all these items with her. It's just always a special time for me.
I did need to tent a piece of foil over the pie to keep it from browning too much on top, but that is pretty standard for my oven and pie crust.
I had never heard of the bread crumbs trick for keeping the bottom crust less soggy in a fruit pie, but this did the trick and the taste of the breadcrumbs was not detected, so am keeping that in my arsenal of baking tricks. (Dorie suggests sprinkling quarter of a cup of unseasoned breadcrumbs onto the bottom crust before filling.) The filling was great...not too sweet, not too runny, and just delicious.
We shared the pie by taking it to Buddy and Laurie's 4th of July party as this makes one very large blueberry pie. The blueberry is not as popular of a flavor with Mark and Matt, who are the primary eaters of pie around here, so it was good to have a place to share it around. The photo shows Buddy enjoying the thought of getting to eat this pie...a more appreciative audience for a nice pie, I cannot imagine! Buddy, being both a lawyer and a judge and all, was just the person to do a bit of judging on Dorie's pie recipe and he deemed it mighty fine. The comments about the pie at the party were all very complimentary, everyone knowing they were being used as "guinea pigs" for testing as I had not a clue how it would taste, etc. until someone cut into it and tasted it. I had a tiny slice, and it was very good. Dorie makes a great pie.
Definitely a keeper...I would definitely make it again, using different fruits for the filling (just because the guys here like other fruit pies better, not because there was anything wrong with the blueberry filling at all, it was very good), and definitely using that bread crumb trick to keep the crust from getting soggy on a nice juicy fruit pie.
Laurie at TWD is on vacation, so I am not sure what we are baking for next week. Guess you will all be surprised when next week rolls around. Click here and then click on individual bakers' blogs at the site if you would like to see more of this week's recipe and the various ways people interpreted their quest. Or, better yet, you can click and join us! See you there.
Oh, and I did a crazy thing by joining up at Daring Bakers this past week. Yikes. Shari was so encouraging and inspiring with her entries that I decided I would give it a whirl as it works somewhat the same as TWD, where everyone bakes the same recipe, however, it is a little different than TWD in that in Daring Bakers you only need to bake something (and post) once a month, the recipe is secret among the members and given out the first of the month, leaving you to bake it sometime during the month, until it is reveal day at the end of the month. Once a month...I figure I can do that to learn something new. If the guys get tired of baked goods, there is always something during some part of the month where donating a baked good is required, so that's a good goal. Since this is a crazy busy month with swim meets, I am beginning in August, not doing the one this month. Where am I going with all this baking? Who knows...something new to do for a bit...my guys are all enjoying it, and in the end, that's what's most important to me.
Go buy Dorie's book and bake this pie...you will be amazed how easy and tasty it all works out!