The Fresh Loaf

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Bravetart Apple Pie

Benito's picture
Benito

Bravetart Apple Pie

Well a year and a half into my pie baking “career” I’ve finally made my first apple pie.  I know a lot of people love apple pie, but I hate peeling apples and have no space for a dedicated apple peeler in my apartment kitchen.  However, this apple pie turned out so well I might have to make room.

I followed the Bravetart Apple Pie recipe almost exactly and overall it turned out well.  I used once again the all butter crust recipe from Bravetart however, this time I subbed 40 g of the water for 40 g of vodka to see if it would make the pastry a touch more tender.

The mistake I made with the filling was that I didn’t leave it out at room temperature for 3 hours to macerate.  The idea being that the macerating fruit would not only give up some of its sweet juices but also that the fruit would shrink so that when baked one wouldn’t be left with a large air gap between the top crust and the fruit.  Unfortunately I didn’t follow that part of the recipe, instead focused in on the line that red it can be kept in the fridge for up to 8 hours.  So after mixing the apple, sugar and spices in a ziplock bag I immediately put it all in the fridge and planned to get up early enough to bake it the next morning.  So I had more of an air gap than I would have liked to have.

Overall the Bravetart recipe is excellent, despite the large amount of juices apple release (Granny Smith in this case) the pie wasn’t runny at all and the Granny Smith stayed in their sliced form with a pleasing amount of bite left to them.

One new thing I had this time was a baking iron.  With the pie baking on a cookie try and then on the preheated baking iron on the lowest rake, the bottom crust was wonderfully browned and crisp, no soggy bottom anywhere.  Again this was remarkable to me because there was at least a cup of juices after the overnight refrigerated mace ration process.  The baking iron isn’t an amazing tool for baking pies!  

Oh, I think that the extra 40 g of Vodka did make this pasty a bit more tender, but I’ll need to make it again the same way to know for sure.  I was also more careful not to knead this pasty too much when forming it too so that might have made the difference.

Comments

ifs201's picture
ifs201

It doesn't get much better than apple pie for me, and yours looks absolutely delicious. Making pie crust is one of my least favorite baking activities so I usually save pie for Thanksgiving and stick to apple crisp otherwise. Awesome job!

Benito's picture
Benito

Thank you Ilene.  I actually enjoy making pie pastry and have been trying to improve on it since starting to bake pies just over a year ago.  I’ve several recipes but of course butter tastes the best.  If you feel like baking a pie I would strongly recommend Bravetart’s recipe, it is surprisingly good and not difficult.

Benny

ifs201's picture
ifs201

I'll have to look it up. I like to macerate as you did, but then I saute the macerated apples in butter for a few minutes to cook the apples slightly. Last year I froze a bunch of the apple filling after sauteing and it froze beautifully. 

I kind of combine these two recipes:

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/12320-apple-pie   - this recipe sautes 

https://smittenkitchen.com/2018/10/even-more-perfect-apple-pie/ - this recipe macerates for a few hours