She’s My Cherry Pie: Claire Saffitz Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi everybody, it's Kerry Diamond from Radio Cherry Bombe. I am still away and out of the studio. I'm on a much needed vacation, so I'm sharing a special episode of She's My Cherry Pie from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. We launched this baking podcast earlier in the year and it is now the number one baking podcast in the country. Amazing, right? She's My Cherry Pie is hosted by Jessie Sheehan, a baker, cookbook author, and recipe developer. In each episode, Jessie talks to a world-class baker or pastry chef about her career and they do a deep dive into a signature baked good. Jessie has talked to Zoë Bakes, Smitten Kitchen, Dorie Greenspan, Canelle et Vanille, and Natasha Pickowicz, just to name a few. We're going to share the Claire Saffitz episode with you today. I know you all love Claire Saffitz. Claire and Jessie talk all things fruit pie. Since stone fruit season is upon us, I know you will love hearing Claire's take on pie dough, butter, bakeware, and more. Stay tuned for She's My Cherry Pie.
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Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You're listening to She's My Cherry Pie, a new baking podcast from Cherry Bombe. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer and author of three baking books, including my latest, Snackable Bakes.
Each Saturday, I'm hanging out with world-class bakers and pastry chefs and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes. Today's guest is Claire Saffitz, one of the most popular baking instructors on YouTube. Claire is also the author of two New York Times best-selling cookbooks, Dessert Person and What's For Dessert. Do you sense a theme here? Not only is Claire a dessert person, but as you're about to learn, she's also a self-described fruit dessert person. She and I talk why bakeware is the most important thing for your pie, butter slices versus cubes, her favorite types of apples and blueberries, and you'll all like this, how it's almost impossible to over-bake a fruit pie. Stay tuned for Claire.
Today's show is presented by Le Creuset and California Prunes. Some housekeeping. Because we're a new podcast, I would love for you to subscribe to She's My Cherry Pie on your favorite podcast platform. While you're there, please leave us a rating. I'm okay with five stars and a review. Tell me the bakers you want me to interview and the baked goods you're obsessed with. I'd love to know. And then head to cherrybombe.com and sign up for our free weekly baking newsletter, learn about our upcoming guests and get that week's recipe.
Here's a word about Le Creuset. For nearly a century, Le Creuset has been creating joy in the kitchen and beyond as the first in colorful cookware, the finest in quality and design and the favorite for generations of cooks and bakers. And you know what? I love my Le Creuset so much that I have them hanging on the wall in my kitchen. I use them when I bake for melting butter, for making honeycomb candy and caramel, for choux pastry and more and also, of course, when I cook. They are literally my everything. And this season, I will definitely be baking bread in their new bread oven. If you haven't seen it, it's a two-piece enamel cast iron set that includes a domed lid to help trap and circulate steam for that perfect, golden, crispy crust every time. It comes in gorgeous Le Creuset colors, including flame, cerise and marseille, which happens to be my Le Creuset color. Whether you're making a wishlist for your kitchen or want to add to your existing collection, head to lecreuset.com to discover the world of Le Creuset, browse their beautiful colors and even snag some recipes.
Claire, so happy to have you here on She's My Cherry Pie and so excited to talk about fruit pies, pie dough and more with you.
Claire Saffitz:
My favorite subject, truly. Thank you for having me.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yay. You're a two-time bestselling cookbook author. You've been described as the internet's beloved baking star. And though I think that's a pretty apt description, I also say beloved baking teacher as you have so much to teach us and there's so much to learn from your YouTube show, Dessert Person, which you created to showcase your first book. Each episode is crazy chock-full of tips and tricks. More than even the tips and tricks, you have this wonderful vulnerability. You're very humble, you're so human, and you show your mistakes and you don't need to be perfect and blah, blah, blah. Where does that come from?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I often refer to myself as a recovering perfectionist so I have that tendency in me. But as I get older and just more experienced, I realized that that's really not the approach that I want to have. It's not really the approach that leads to I think overall happiness. So I don't go to great lengths to appear like I know everything because I know that I don't. I think the more that I do baking, and I'm guessing this is your experience too, the more I realize that there's always more to learn. You've never reached mastery. I've reached a level of comfort and familiarity and knowledge that I feel really good about that I know that there's always more to learn. I've never tried to present myself as I know everything there is to know, only do what I do because it's not accurate, first of all, and it's not very human. It's just not relatable.
So I make mistakes and often, it comes out of, and I think this is also very relatable, it comes out of something like I don't feel like letting something freeze for as long as I know it should or cool for as long as I know it should and so I just proceed or it's really hot in my kitchen, which is always the problem. So I hit these road bumps and I do think that what's useful about it is I've learned how to troubleshoot because I think so much of baking is troubleshooting. And so that's what I get excited to share and to showcase on YouTube is okay, if this happens, don't worry. Here's what you can do or that kind of thing. Or if this happened and it's not great, no one will care, that kind of thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. And it'll still taste good.
Claire Saffitz:
It'll still taste good.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, 100%. But I also think what's nice is you show that it doesn't have to be super serious. Particularly when you're learning something complicated or when making something complicated, it takes a long time, but there's just a levity to the way you're doing it. I've read that Dessert Person, your first book, came to be because you felt on some level you needed to defend dessert. And what sounds nice about What's For Dessert, your second book, is that now you don't need to defend it. You're celebrating it.
Claire Saffitz:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you unpack that a little for people that don't know about how they connect in a funny way?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. Dessert Person is all about my perspective as a baker, the kinds of recipes that I like to make and to eat and to share with people. And it did come out of I think my experience in food media where I did feel like I was the dessert person defending dessert to non-dessert people. I'm sure you hear this all the time, but I would be around people who would say like, "Oh, well, I'd rather have the cheese course or another cocktail than the dessert." And I was like, "I can't understand why you're putting it in this way that's either-or." It makes no sense to me. Why not have both?
Dessert just felt like it was something that was a little bit homely and less sophisticated among sophisticated eaters. So that really bothered me, and I say this in the introduction to Dessert Person, but sweet is one of the five flavors. How can you have a wholesale rejection of one of the five flavors that exist? It's such a part of our experience of food. So Dessert Person was a little bit of a polemic, here is my defense of dessert and we should all experience it, and I'm a dessert person, and that was a political statement in a way.
And then I think What's For Dessert is very much the result of having spent the last couple of years since Dessert Person came out in a community of dessert people where it wouldn't even occur to me, I don't have to defend it because we're all like-minded. And so I love that I think Dessert Person brought together a community. I think the YouTube channel also helped a lot. So I just feel like I'm now in a space with other people who are also dessert people, and all I get to do now is celebrate it rather than have to ... I don't have to make a case for it anymore. So that's a very good place to be and I think it represents an evolution in my thinking about dessert.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also think, again, this I think is your humility, which is so appealing, attractive, etc., but I think you've even said that writing What's For Dessert took you out of your comfort zone as a recipe developer. Can you explain that to people? Because I'm sure people are like, "Claire can do anything," and it's cool to know that you were like, "What?"
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. As I said, Dessert Person is all baking. I think there's actually only one recipe in the book that's not baked, and I think it's the English muffins which are griddled. It doesn't technically go in the oven but for all intents and purposes, it's a baking recipe. And I finished writing the book and I remember talking to my editor about what am I going to do next? I'm just thinking about how there were whole categories of desserts that I never even touched, not only in this book but just at all in my whole career, and how intrigued I was by things that were less familiar to me like mousses and gelatin-based desserts and puddings. I maybe had made pudding one time or something like that.
And so I felt if this book is going to be approachable stuff, then it made sense to do almost the inverse of Dessert Person, so to do a much wider breadth of things like Dessert Person is more narrow and more focused around my particular love of baking and my approach with a wide range of difficulty. And so this book is the inverse. It's all pretty approachable stuff but an expansive take on dessert of every category. I love that, and I got to really explore stuff that I had basically never really made. And so I learned a lot. I learned so much writing this book.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you just briefly describe your dessert style before we jump into the recipe?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. Well, this is very apropos because I'm definitely a fruit dessert person, so I love taking inspiration from the seasons and the farmer's market. It's a way of, I think, looking at time that's really helpful. I get excited about each new season because I get excited about all the fruit that I get to bake with. And that's especially great in winter because it's citrus. I'm less bummed about winter because I get excited about the Meyer lemons and the Satsuma tangerines, all the beautiful citrus. So definitely fruit dessert. And I love pastry. I love the flaky, buttery texture that you get from pastry, seasonally focused, fruit focused. And as I get more experienced and older, I definitely lean towards simpler stuff.
Jessie Sheehan:
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Thank you to California Prunes for sponsoring this episode of She's My Cherry Pie. What do California Prunes have to do with baking, you might ask? The answer is everything. First, prunes are a great ingredient on their own when it comes to baking. Imagine a California prune bread with pecans and cardamom, or a ginger-prune snacking cake, or thumbprint cookies with a jammy prune filling. I'd love one of those right now.
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And third, snacking. California Prunes are a super snack because they're loaded with nutrients like vitamin K, dietary fiber, potassium, and antioxidants, all of which are good for your heart, gut, and bones. And you know how important that is. California Prunes are portable, delicious, and have just the right level of sweetness. You can find California Prunes at your favorite grocery store or specialty shop. To learn more and snag some great recipes, head over to californiaprunes.org. Now back to our guest.
We're going to tackle a couple of different apple pies of yours, your blueberry slab pie, sour cherry pie, but I wanted to talk about the pie dough first because that's always, at least to me and I think everyone, such an interesting discussion always to see how different people make different pie doughs. And what's really cool is that you have one recipe in Dessert Person that you've riffed on for What's For Dessert. And as you said, you're always tweaking and trying to make things a little simpler and a little more user-friendly. So I thought it would be fun to go through both and see the changes.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. For sure.
Jessie Sheehan:
Both of them have the same ingredients. We'll go through those in a second. In What's For Dessert, it's double the recipe because it's for the double pie crust but it's still the same ingredients, just different amounts. And basically, what you've said about the difference, it's the same dough, just brought together in a different way. So this is I think going to be really cool for people.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So the dough is, as we know, some of us who bake, pie dough usually has about the same four or five ingredients. There's unsalted butter in yours. There's all-purpose flour. And do you have a brand, Claire, that you love, that you would share with us?
Claire Saffitz:
Typically, King Arthur.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. There's a teeny bit of sugar, and I think you've said that it helps for browning. You're not trying to sweeten the dough. You just want to get some color. Is that right?
Claire Saffitz:
That's right. Yeah. It just helps it caramelize. It doesn't bring sweetness to it. You could use that recipe for anything savory.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. Perfect. Would you add a little more if it was a sweet pie or it might-
Claire Saffitz:
Not really. I'm often just topping it with sugar. That's helping. But in the dough, I just pretty much leave it, the same.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then kosher salt is in this recipe, and I just use kosher in everything. I never write a recipe without it. Are you the same or do you sometimes have a use for fine sea salt?
Claire Saffitz:
I almost always have kosher at home. I have usually a couple of different salts at home, but I have definitely found myself if it's at someone else's house or in a rental or something where the only thing is the random, it's from the grocery store, the random grinder thing of pink salt. I don't even... and I just do it by sight or by feel. I throw it in. You're just seasoning the dough, so it's very flexible.
Jessie Sheehan:
So don't overthink it.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. Right.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. And then ice water. So in Dessert Person, those are the ingredients. We're now going to talk a little bit about the tools and the assembly. Dessert Person is interesting because you take the butter, 10 ounces. You're going to take five ounces, cut it very thinly, stick it in the fridge. And my first question with that is are you using a bench scraper to cut your butter or a chef's knife or something else?
Claire Saffitz:
Usually, a paring knife.
Jessie Sheehan:
A paring knife.
Claire Saffitz:
Something small.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Okay. And then you have your ice water ready. And then you're using a large bowl to whisk your dry. Is it a glass bowl? Is it metal? I'm very into glass Pyrex bowls, but I know a lot of people are into metal.
Claire Saffitz:
Mostly, what I have at home are metal, but I think glass or metal are good. It's almost just never plastic.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Half of the butter is in the fridge. You're going to cube the remaining butter. Toss that in. Do you want to talk about why there are two? I know why because I read your recipe, but maybe the listeners want to hear.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. And this is a change definitely between the recipe in Dessert Person and What's For Dessert. But the original thinking for that, for Dessert Person, was that different not only sizes of butter but orientations of butter lead to different effects in the final dough. But the thin slices of butter, you're getting a jumpstart on the idea of flattening the pieces into sheets. And so eventually in the final dough, those get really thin and create that flaky texture that you really want, and they're a little bit bigger so you're getting bigger flaky pieces. And then the cubed pieces, which you're working in first, those are getting much smaller, and the smaller more worked in the butter it is, the more tender. So it's always about that balance between tenderness and flakiness that I'm going for with an all-butter. I'm almost always all-butter. I don't know if I've ever even made-
Jessie Sheehan:
One with lard.
Claire Saffitz:
... a lard. Yeah. That's more of a Southern thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Or shortening. Yeah, I don't think I have either. You're going to cube the butter and then smash it in with your fingertips until pea-sized, and you're going to get those flat pieces, and you just told us why we want both. And I think you also wrote just that those bigger pieces prohibit the gluten development, or I heard it... Sometimes I'll say “write” and sometimes I'll say "heard.” I'm never sure which. But I think actually, you said this in a video that it just prohibits the gluten development also to have those larger pieces. And you want us to get this, I think you said coarse cornmeal.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah, coarse meal. I think one thing that happens when you work butter into a flour mixture is it will yellow a little bit. It really actually does look like a yellow cornmeal, but it's pretty coarse. And so a lot of times in pie dough recipes, you'll see the language of butter should be... biggest pieces should be no larger than a pea or that kind of thing, which I think is a good general rule of thumb.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. And then you're going to add a quarter cup to five tablespoons maybe. I think in Dessert Person, it says five tablespoons of this cold water and mixing it in with a fork and then your hand. I love to use my hands. I know you don't want to get it too warm, but I just feel like it's just so good when you're trying to hydrate that flour and butter.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I think notably in both books, everything is done... There's no food processor method so you're doing this by hand. I think touching it is really important. The fork at the beginning is just to avoid a thing that happens when you're adding water where the water gets on your hands and then you touch the flour and then it gets really sticky on your hands. So you quickly mix it in with a fork just to get it absorbed.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's good to know.
Claire Saffitz:
And then you switch the hands, which it's a little bit cleaner.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. That makes sense. And then you chill. And again, this is going to be different. Just warning everyone who's... not warning. Exciting, everyone who's listening because there is a change in how this recipe is in Claire's second book. But this is, I think and I hope you guys do too, super cool to see the differences. So now, Claire, you chill it for two hours then take it out and do a letter fold. People know, but some don't. Do you mind just briefly telling us what a letter fold is and why we do it?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I first picked up this technique from Tara Jensen, the incredible baker. And this is a quick or faux lamination. So lamination is the process of basically layering butter into dough that creates super flaky pastry like croissants or puff pastry. And this is an Ersatz lamination. So you basically roll it out into a thin slab that's longer than it is wide, and then the letter fold is just folded into thirds basically. And so that is taking all the little bits of butter that are in there, flattening them. And then when you layer, you're tripling the number of little, thin butter layers basically, so it does produce a very flaky pie dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. And then again, in this recipe from Dessert Person, you have a rest for about 30 minutes before you're going to roll the dough out. Now I thought it would just be interesting to take us to this stage of about to roll but in the new book. So in this book, all the butter is the same size. It's all thinly sliced. Can you tell us why you got rid of cubes?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I love that we're comparing them because I'm so into the What's For Dessert method that it's been a while since I've done the Dessert Person method.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, it was also funny to read them because I read the Dessert Person one first, and I was like, oh, that's so cool. They're two different kinds of butter. Oh, she does the letter fold. That's so cool. And then I read the next recipe, I was like, oh.
Claire Saffitz:
I took those out.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Where did they go? It was so cool. But I get it when you see what-
Claire Saffitz:
Well, and I do think it's significant that the recipe is doubled in What's For Dessert because I feel like the best thing you can do for yourself as a baker is to have a pie dough in the freezer. And so I was just like, if you're going to go through this whole process, might as well make two.
Jessie Sheehan:
Agreed.
Claire Saffitz:
So I was like, okay, so I'm going to default. My default version will be two, and if you only want to make one, you can just have it. So I doubled it up right off the bat then. In What's For Dessert, a big difference is just all thinly sliced, and that is for a couple of reasons. One, it's actually just less work than cubing the butter and I feel like it's not warming up as much. And the method, which we'll get to, breaks down those pieces quite a bit and so you actually want to start with bigger pieces at the outset, and it's just faster. So much of the method in What's For Dessert is about minimizing the amount that you're working the dough, which produces a very tender crust and handling it less. So starting with big pieces, once we get to the bringing it together with the water, it's already in the right size pieces.
Jessie Sheehan:
And also, I feel like the recipe not only does that but it also eases the amount of time. So you have your thinly sliced butter. You're adding it to your whisked, dry ingredients, tossing, using your fingers to mash up the butter a little. Here you make a well. You're adding your water, tossing with a fork we just discussed. And then here's where things get crazy. Claire has you dump all of those ingredients right then and there on to your work surface and you grab your bench scraper. First, favorite brand of a bench scraper. Do you like the one with the wooden handle? Do you like the metal one?
Claire Saffitz:
Oh, I'm the person that throws every single thing, except for knives, in the dishwasher, so anything I can dish-wash.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Perfect. And tell us what happens when it gets dumped.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. As opposed to Dessert Person where you're assembling everything inside the bowl, I really felt like the sides of the bowl are an impediment because one of the most important things with pie dough, besides temperature, is hydration. You want to add just the right amount of water to bring the dough together so it's not going to crack when you roll it out, but you don't don't want to add so much that you're developing gluten or overdeveloping gluten and creating something wet and stretchy. So that hydration is so important. And by getting it out of the bowl and spreading it out on the work surface, I think you're much better able to gauge the hydration and what is the right amount. So in this book, everything happens on the work surface so you're not having to just get below everything in the bowl and lift it up and mix. It just makes it easier to see what's going on and to feel what's going on.
So you get it out on the work surface, and that's after you've added the water, but you haven't really worked the water in. You've just quickly mixed it with the fork so you have super dry pieces, just dry, floury bits and then you have big, wet clumps. And then what you're doing is you grab your bench scraper and you are chopping it up on the work surface, Benihana style, like you're on the flat top or something. As you do that, you're chopping up those big, wet clumps and working it into the drier areas and you're chopping up the butter into smaller bits. And then you push everything periodically back into the pile, which is why the scraper is so useful because it's really easy, and your hands are not touching it at all, so there's no warming of the butter from the warmth in your hands.
And eventually, as you continue this chopping motion, you'll notice that the mixture is becoming more uniform in texture, and that the hydration, all that water is touching all the flour evenly, and it's getting super evenly hydrated. The color is changing a little bit because the flour is hydrating and the mixture is turning a little yellow because you're working the butter also in, and you're also getting really different sizes of butter. You're getting little bitty pieces and then some bigger pieces, so that's why you just start with everything just bigger because that chopping up takes care of that different sizes of butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I just want to flag that you're talking about color with pie dough because as bakers and as cooks, we're always looking when we're explaining a recipe to someone about different signs, the way something smells, the way something looks, whether you're sticking a toothpick in a cake, and I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk about the fact that pie dough actually changes, gets more yellow as it hydrates and as the butter is incorporated. And that's a really cool thing for people to look out for.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I don't think that I even was aware of it until I had made it a thousand times. And then I realized that that was what I was actually looking for but hadn't really even called it out to myself. So eventually, you get this shaggy mass of almost big, wet crumbs on your work surface, and that's when you can bring it together. So that's when you drop the bench scraper, use your hands, mash everything together.
And I do have a little bit of an intermediate step where you're squeezing everything together so it holds. And if there's any bits that are still really floury and haven't been incorporated yet, then you move the clumpy parts off to the side and leave the floury bits and you can just add a little bit more water. One thing that's great for pie dough is to use a spray bottle for water. It's so useful for pie dough because you have to add just the tiniest bit of water and it's so useful and it spreads out so it's like you're distributing it.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm sure people know this who've made a ton of pie dough, but if you haven't, that's another brilliant trick of Claire's, separating the hydrated pie dough from the floury bits at the bottom of the bowl or on your work surface that haven't been hydrated yet because you don't want to overwork the dough by adding the floury bits in. Separate out what's working and add a teeny bit of... That's in both recipes. I think that's really smart.
Claire Saffitz:
And you don't want to add more water to the parts that already have enough to hold together.
Jessie Sheehan:
A hundred percent.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. So this method I love, almost every time, it's leading to pie dough that has just that Goldilocks amount of hydration. So you can roll it down and it doesn't crack and it's nice and smooth, but it's not wet so it doesn't produce...
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Can you tell people, because there's no more letter fold, there's a different trick to get those layers and there's no wait to get to the letter fold or to get to this trick.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. That was part of the calculus here, I didn't want to have to have two waiting periods. So I do a different version of that letter fold. As soon as you bring the dough together on that work surface, I have you press it down into a square or a rectangle. So you're compacting it. And I often use the bench scraper to help make straight sides because the more even it is, the easier of a time you'll have. So you compact it into this square, rectangle thing, and then you cut it into quadrants. Again, that bench scraper is the perfect tool because you can use it to cut it, and then you're going to stack them. So bench scraper again to help you lift up the quadrants and stack them one on top of the other.
And that's essentially doing the same thing as the letter fold. You press it all down, except it's actually doing it times four instead of times three, and that's going to create all those layers. And then you actually divide it in two so you have your two crusts, your two portions, and at that point, you're basically done. You have to just chill it.
Jessie Sheehan:
You're chilling for about two hours for both doughs. Then the recipes come together a little. After the two hours, you let it rest on the counter for maybe five minutes, two to five minutes. I think we've talked about this before on the podcast, but you're hitting your dough with a rolling pin. So first question is, favorite rolling pin?
Claire Saffitz:
I prefer a dowel style rolling pin, and I like the ones from the Vermont Rolling Pin company. It's a nice one.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, cool. What I love about your instructions about hitting the dough is you're basically saying hold it and almost drop it. Don't smash it. I'm a smasher from way back. So tell me why I should not be smashing.
Claire Saffitz:
I don't want people to break clean through their disk of dough or whatever shape the dough is, and that's actually just... Very briefly backing up. I tell people whatever the shape is of the final, if you're making a round pie and you want it to be round, or if you're making a slab pie and you want it to be rectangular, to chill the dough in whatever shape you intended it to be as you roll it out because you're orienting this network of gluten in a way that it's going to want to maintain as you roll it out or whatever shape it is. I tell people you're going to lightly beat the dough but it's almost like you are pulling up as soon as you hit it. You're not trying to break it in half. You're not trying to blast it to smithereens. But that whacking is helping to soften the butter or make it more malleable without having it warm up first. It's making it so that you can roll it out but it doesn't have to get warm before that point.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also thought this was fascinating. There are two different ways that you're going to be hitting if you're making a circle, a pie, or let's say you're making a galette or a slab pie. Can you tell us how you hit for a circle and how you hit for a rectangle?
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. So for a rectangle, I'm going lengthwise and crosswise, just in two directions. So all along the length, hitting it in parallel, like wax all up and down, and then giving it a 90-degree turn and doing the same thing in the opposite direction. And so that's going to maintain that rectangular orientation. And if it's a circle, I'm beating it. And what I'm actually doing, as I'm beating it, I'm not really moving the rolling pin, but I'm moving the dough. I'm rotating the dough constantly after every whack. And that's to encourage the dough to expand in every direction so that it stays round at the same time.
Jessie Sheehan:
Which reminds me, so there's definitely bench flour here. When you take that... and you're pretty generous. Am I right in thinking?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I went to culinary school and they always were never add... Add the tiniest amount of flour. And it's like I don't really feel like... I'm not taking it on, but if it needs... better that you use the flour if bread is sticking than it sticks.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then it sticks. And I think it's interesting, the banging is helping you get your shape. In Dessert Person, you then start rolling. But what's interesting in What's For Dessert, and again, I think is you're streamlining, you're almost banging it until it's one-half inch thick. When it's time to roll, easy peasy. Love that.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I feel like I can't start rolling if it's an inch thick because-
Jessie Sheehan:
You can't even press it down.
Claire Saffitz:
Right. And another thing, too, that I've noticed is how much the brand of butter makes a difference because you don't actually have to beat it so much if you're using a brand of butter that stays somewhat malleable when it's cold. Kerrygold is nice and malleable even when it's straight out of the fridge.
Jessie Sheehan:
I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah. It's softer. Even when you want Kerrygold to be chilled, sometimes you're like, this is straight out of the refrigerator and it's soft.
Claire Saffitz:
Right. It's better you stick it in the freezer. And then other brands of butter that I've used, my husband and I use Ronnybrook a lot, very firm butter when it's cold. So that is going to require more of that whacking to soften it.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then is it a 13-inch round where we're looking for if we're going to do a 9-inch pie plate?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. It's a generous amount of dough for the standard non-deep dish, 9-inch pie plate because I feel like for especially more beginner bakers, it's helpful to have the extra wiggle room.
Jessie Sheehan:
And your rolling is, just like you said, for banging, you're moving your dough constantly.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. When you're rolling out, I think it's so important to keep that dough moving because you want the dough, it's hard to articulate this, but basically part of the purpose of flour on the surface is that it's like ball bearings so that your entire dough is moving across the surface. If you're not keeping it moving, very often you're going to get sticking and you're going to get the very bottom of the dough sticking to the surface and then the top of the dough extending beyond that. And that's working the dough more. So I'm always keeping it moving. Sometimes if you have a bigger piece of butter, it flattens out and it gets soft and it sticks to the surface. I'll just pat a little bit of flour into that bit of butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. So now we're transferring the dough to our pie plate. I think I know what you recommend for a pie plate, but what would you like people to use?
Claire Saffitz:
I do like glass, and I'm so much more attuned to this now at this stage in my career, but the material of your bakeware is so important. It's maybe the most important thing and it's such a big variable. So I have a whole thing about baking in glass and when you should do it, when you shouldn't do it. But pie for me, especially a fruit pie, glass is what you want. But ceramic is... There are so many beautiful pie plates out there. Use whatever you really like. But for me, it's glass.
Jessie Sheehan:
And because people who aren't sure can pick up the pie plate with pot holders, look at the bottom and tell if their pie is properly baked.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah, exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
I like glass as well. And then in one of the videos I watched about transferring the rolled out dough to the pie plate, you describe pulling the ends inward. You're trying to get this perfect slump of crust. Can you describe what pulling the ends inward means?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. So I take that overhang and I lift it up so that it's more inside the actual walls of the pie plate. And that helps to redistribute the weight so that the parts of the dough that are going to be along the walls of the pie plate, gravity naturally pulls them into the pie plate so that I'm not stretching it. That's really important. I think if you stretch it, you're working the dough and you're going to have shrinkage and maybe some cracking. And so you really want the dough to naturally take the shape of the pie plate without lots of-
Jessie Sheehan:
Pressing.
Claire Saffitz:
... stretching, yeah, pressing. That lifting in of those edges helps that slumping motion. Gravity can do its thing. Otherwise, I think the weight is keeping it from working into that very crucial place where the sides meet the bottom.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then you're pressing the edges around what... You actually say press the edge to anchor the pie dough above. And then for both recipes at this point, you're going to refrigerate. It may just be while you assemble the filling, but you're giving it a little chill now that it's in the pie plate.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. All that rolling is working the dough and it's developing the gluten and you want it just to relax. So you want the butter to get cold again. You want the dough to relax. That's going to help you later on. And so you can just throw it in the fridge and you can do that in advance if you want. And just that pressing in is good because, especially in a glass pie plate, but ensuring that contact everywhere between the dough and the pie plate is going to help you with browning. So if there's big air pockets, you're just not going to get the browning that you want.
Jessie Sheehan:
I wanted to talk about the cinnamon sugar apple pie in What's For Dessert. So awesome.
Claire Saffitz:
Oh yeah, I love that pie.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I love this. You said it disproves the theory that baking does not use fresh ingredients and can't be seasonal. There's a crumb topped apple pie that I also love that's on your YouTube, but we're going to talk about the cinnamon sugar one first. So one thing I love about this is your commitment to the simplicity of cinnamon in an apple pie.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I do think cinnamon is overused, but if there's one place to use it, it should absolutely be in an apple pie.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So first things first. You make a cinnamon sugar mixture. Take two tablespoons out of that to sprinkle over the pie at the end and the rest will be part of your filling. I wondered if you have a favorite cinnamon that we should all...
Claire Saffitz:
I recently started using the King Arthur brand Vietnamese cinnamon. I'll use whatever grocery store cinnamon because that's what people are using. But when you get a really high quality true cinnamon, it is pretty special actually.
Jessie Sheehan:
That sounds delicious. And then for the apples here, you call for dark brown sugar. I just wondered, can we use light brown? Could we use granulated?
Claire Saffitz:
Oh, yeah, you can use light brown. Yeah, for sure. That was because I'm starting with granulated so I can make that cinnamon sugar, that is that classic cinnamon sugar, and then compensating with dark brown. But you can use light.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think you said this in the video that you also like using, maybe I made this up, but you like the dark sugar in the filling because it covers any brown spots of the apples.
Claire Saffitz:
Oh, yes. Yeah, for sure. Your apples can brown.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. Of.
Claire Saffitz:
Apples brown.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know. But I remember in the bakery I worked at, we were always covering them in lemon juice and ice water while we made the pie dough. I'm not sure that's necessary.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. Maybe for a beautiful French galette or something where you're-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. Exactly.
Claire Saffitz:
But for a pie, no.
Jessie Sheehan:
Agreed. And I love that you use cornstarch because that's the thickener I always use. Is that your fave? Do you ever do tapioca or any of the other, or flour?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I don't like flour because it's so cloudy. Cornstarch has always been my go-to. I would like to experiment with tapioca. I know that there's a lot of nuances between thickeners and some are like, "Will have a better jelling and will be more clear." But I just feel like cornstarch, it's so accessible and you can find it literally anywhere. I don't want people to have to search for their thickener for a pie.
Jessie Sheehan:
A little bit of orange zest. What does that do? Does it pop the apple or does it taste orangey?
Claire Saffitz:
There’s actually orange zest all over this book because I love what it does in small quantities. It doesn't give it a pronounced orange flavor, but when you mix, I have found, orange zest and brown sugar and some vanilla, because we have a little bit of vanilla, it just creates this really complex background flavor that I really love. And it's such an easy thing to include that little orange in. So it's not a lot because orange has a very prominent flavor. It can really overpower, but in small amounts, it adds such a nice background complexity.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, that's nice. Pinch of kosher salt. And then in this recipe, you ask for Pink Lady's.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Talk to me about Pink Lady. We'll get to it, but just spoiler alert, I'm going to tell you the apple in the other pie. But in the other pie, you called for Granny Smith. I'm like Claire; I love Granny Smith. But then you screwed me all up because then you called for Pink Lady.
Claire Saffitz:
So actually, Pink Lady is more of my default baking apple.
Jessie Sheehan:
Interesting.
Claire Saffitz:
Because you can find it anywhere. But then when I was thinking about the cinnamon sugar apple pie in What's For Dessert, because accessibility was so important to me, I was like, you could find Granny Smith at a bodega, truly anywhere.
Jessie Sheehan:
Totally.
Claire Saffitz:
In fact, now that I think about it, I think you really could probably buy all the ingredients for that apple pie at a bodega.
Jessie Sheehan:
Which is amazing. I love that.
Claire Saffitz:
So that was important to me. Plus, I love the acidity of Granny Smith.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, me too.
Claire Saffitz:
And they're so easy to find and they're pretty firm. They don't break out so much.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love how tart they are.
Claire Saffitz:
And I was like, okay, you don't have to add lemon juice. All the tartness is there. But I do love Pink Lady because I do think they have great sweet-tart balance and they hold their shape really well.
Jessie Sheehan:
Speaking of lemon juice, I usually would put a squeeze with my apple pie filling, but I'm loving that you're using the secret ingredient. It's apple cider vinegar in the filling. Can you talk to us about that?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I love the parallelism of the apple cider vinegar in an apple pie. And again, it's a pantry item, so easy to find. Also, I think literally at a bodega, you can get apple cider vinegar. And I like that it's just a thing you can grab off the shelf and you don't have to go get a lemon as a separate fresh ingredient. All you need are the apples. And then of course, there's the apple. That was the part where it's made from apples, and I just really like that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I always put a little bit of apple cider vinegar in my pie dough.
Claire Saffitz:
In the dough, right.
Jessie Sheehan:
Because I just love that. I love the smell when you're making it. And I love that tanginess, but I love the idea of putting it in the filling. I thought that was so smart. Orange bitters, you say they're optional. Again, are they just adding to that vanilla, orange, brown sugar situation?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. It just adds that complexity that you don't even really notice, but it just makes everything taste more apple-y and almost that cider taste that you get, but also very optional because it's more of a specialty.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I also love that there's a little bit of vanilla, because I'm very vanilla forward and I always put it in.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah, me too.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm like, oh, I think this filling could use some vanilla. I love that.
Claire Saffitz:
And that's one thing where it's like I have it in a squeeze bottle so I'm always just like, well, give it a one-second squeeze.
Jessie Sheehan:
Me too. I have the squeeze, and I'm like, oops. Favorite brand of vanilla?
Claire Saffitz:
I love Heilala.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, nice. Yeah.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. They're wonderful.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, good. And then this recipe has melted butter, and we'll talk in a second of how it gets applied, but for richness.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. Apples plus butter plus cinnamon, how can you beat that?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, you have to. Okay. The assembly. You're mixing in this large bowl. You're going to mix the cinnamon sugar, remove two tablespoons for sprinkling. I loved in the video of the apple crumb pie, you gave some tips on peeling all the apples first and then slicing. I think that's great because a lot of people think, “Oh, I got to cut each one as I go,” because maybe they think they're going to get brown. I don't know. But I thought that was a great-
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. More efficient. Definitely like a restaurant thing. You do every step-
Jessie Sheehan:
With that one tool, get rid of that tool and move to your next.
Claire Saffitz:
Right. And then move on. Right. It's less in-between time of the time that it takes to put down the knife and pick up the peeler. You're wasting time.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. 100%.
Claire Saffitz:
Which I don't know if anyone cares about, but it definitely is more efficient.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, I have to say it resonated for me, so at least I care.
Claire Saffitz:
There you go.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then your apple cutting technique. Can you talk about it? You slice next to the core and then lay it down.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. So rather than cutting in half through the core, scooping, cutting the core out and then slicing, I find it more efficient to actually cut down alongside the core, avoiding it. And you cut off what I call a ‘lobe,’ a lobe of the apple. And then you give it a 90-degree turn and you cut down around the core on all four sides. And then you have this rectangular thing of the core, which I also then I nibble on because there's bits of apple at the stem end and the bottom.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Chef's treat.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. Right. I also like to eat the apple skin when I'm slicing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love the skin. Sometimes I use an OXO apple core. Would you use that?
Claire Saffitz:
Oh. So I call for actually an apple core in... I have an apple cake in the book where I call for it. But in this case, it's so much faster because you're just holding the knife the whole time.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right. Yeah. I love that.
Claire Saffitz:
And I go back and forth between thinly sliced apples and chunkier apples, and I'm definitely now leaning... I lean toward the chunky side.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. You were saying it gets translucent when it's baked and then the texture of it.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I love the texture.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you said about a half an inch.
Claire Saffitz:
About half an inch. It does lead to more shrinking of the filling because the bigger the pieces, the bigger the air gaps between the slices. Literally just press down on the apples inside the crust and compact them. There's always some shrinking of the filling.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. Which just happens.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So your apples are ready. You add the dry ingredients from the filling, the sugar, the starch, the zest and the salt to the bowl with the cinnamon sugar. Add the apples, the vinegar and the vanilla. Your pie dough has been in the fridge. Add your filling. And I love this, which people don't always know. The apples will have released some juice but you want them to use the juice. You don't want people to think, “Oh, it'll be soggy. I better get ready.”
Claire Saffitz:
I bake fruit pies for an incredibly long time. And so I'm like, yeah, put the juice in because also that juice has dissolved sugars and some of the starch, and it's like I want you to put everything in. And some people, I think Sarah Carey does this in a lot of her fruit pies and she's an amazing pie maker, but she'll basically let everything macerate, meaning she'll mix all the filling ingredients or at least just the fruit filling with the sugar. Let the sugar draw out all the liquid and then will cook down the liquid.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think Rose Levy Beranbaum does it too in her pie book.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. It's a great technique, but I feel like for apple pie, because apples are not the juiciest of all the fruits and there's some starch in there, it's just not necessary.
Jessie Sheehan:
Also, again, it's just because of my easy nature, simple nature, but it's a teeny bit too fussy for me.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. It takes time. You need to let it cool again. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I loved this tip. When you put the apples into the lined pie plate, you have people stick apples into the nook. Can you tell us about nook sticking?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. That was also a Tara Jensen tip that I picked up because years and years and years ago when I was at BA [Bon Appétit], she did a pie workshop.
Jessie Sheehan:
I remember.
Claire Saffitz:
And this is where I picked this up, and it was apple pie. And so she had just, you do that... It doesn't take very long. It sounds fussy but it's really not. You're just taking apple slices and fitting them into that same area where the sides meet the bottom, and it's just helping to prevent... That's where you're most likely to make big air pockets if you just dump the whole filling in and then you would get a more dramatic shrinking down of that filling. So just doing that one little step where you just make a ring gives you like a base, and then you can literally just dump the rest of the filling in and it just helps to fill out the crust.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. For this particular pie because it's a double-crusted pie, not only did you roll out that dough and put it into your pie plate, but you also rolled out another, the other piece to be the top.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes, the second.
Jessie Sheehan:
After you make the filling, you roll out the dough, put the pie plate in the fridge, but you roll the other half and keep it at room temp. You want that a little bit malleable.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. Especially for the top, because a thin pie crust if you rolled it out, if you chill it, it can get a little brittle so you just want to avoid that, which if that happens, just let it warm up on your counter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Also, the filling is so quick. It's not going to be sitting there for very long. So the fillings in our pie crust, you're using a little bit of water around the edge as the glue to it. Why not an egg wash?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I thought about it and I almost did egg wash, but you're not egg washing the surface of the pie. It's actually melted butter, which I know we'll get to, but it felt, okay, do you really need a whole egg to use the equivalent of probably a teaspoon and then you're going to have 90% of this beaten egg leftover? So I was like, water, it's not as good a glue as egg but it does the job. I didn't want to make anyone annoyed.
Jessie Sheehan:
I get it. But here's my other question. How come you didn't do egg wash? So just again, sorry, spoiler alert, peeps. So Claire will have you brush the top of the pie dough with melted butter and then sprinkle on that cinnamon sugar. And so my question was why wasn't it egg wash in both places?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. So I almost am always egg washing pastry because it gets it so shiny and brown and it looks so pretty. But the inspiration for this pie was cinnamon sugar and butter combination. It's just the best flavor ever. And of course, I want that with apples. So there's some melted butter that you drizzle over the apples when they're inside the pie plate. You reserve, I think it's a tablespoon of melted butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
It is. Yeah.
Claire Saffitz:
And you brush that over the entire top of the pie, which surprisingly one tablespoon gives you plenty of coverage. And what I like about that, not only the flavor of course and that mingles with the cinnamon sugar, but there's a little bit of water in that butter. And when you sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over it, it dissolves a little bit of the sugar and it creates this almost like crackly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, pretty.
Claire Saffitz:
You would get that with egg too because there's water in egg, but it creates this, it's hard to describe, but sparkly, crackled, crunchy surface. And it was just this combination of pastry and cinnamon and sugar and butter that I just couldn't resist.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I love that. So we didn't talk about the baking time, but it's basically a 400 degree oven. You're going to put the pie plate on a baking sheet.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah, always.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you ever keep the baking sheet in the oven while it's preheating so that it's warm when you add the pie plate to avoid a soggy bottom?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I've preheated it before, but again, because I bake pies for so long, I'm just like in the end, by the time you're baking it, I don't think the headstart made that much of a difference.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. And then that's 400 degrees for 20 minutes, then you're lowering the temp to 350. And I just love you for how long you want to bake a pie. We're going for at least an hour, if not an hour and 10 minutes after that. We're talking almost 90 minutes. People don't understand how long you have to bake a pie to have a set filling and to have the color that you want.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I tell people you're not cooking a steak. It's not like you have to remove it from the oven right at the point of doneness, and that there is this specific point of doneness, and after that, it's overcooked. It is almost impossible to over bake a fruit pie. The only thing you can really do is burn the pastry, which I've done before, but I'm like, yes, but then the filling is perfect.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right, exactly.
Claire Saffitz:
So put a little foil over it or whatever. I tell people I'd rather have a very well done crust and a set filling than underdone in the center.
Jessie Sheehan:
Me too. And then I also love this, which I think you've said this in the video and maybe not in the book, but that you like to wait a day to eat your pie. You want to make a pie and eat it the next day. It's just really set if you do that.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. Warm pie is delicious, but the satisfaction you get when you pull out a slice with clean cut sides and just a tiny bit of ooze in the center of the pie plate but no gushing pieces.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, river. Okay. The crumb-topped one, we mostly talked about it, but I personally and I think you do too as well, a crumb-topped apple pie is so delicious because it's crumble plus pie, the two best desserts.
Claire Saffitz:
Right. Truly the best of both of worlds.
Jessie Sheehan:
A hundred percent. And you describe it post-bake as having this crunchy lid of topping, which just sounds like I need to eat it for dinner. The crumb topping here is old-fashioned oats, unsalted butter, sugar, cinnamon. And I don't want to rock your world, but you make a big deal about it has to be old-fashioned. I'm just going to sound crazy, but I do make crumbles with one-minute oats.
Claire Saffitz:
Oh, yeah?
Jessie Sheehan:
And they're actually... because you said, I think, don't use one minute because it'll get soggy. They actually get crispy.
Claire Saffitz:
Oh, really?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Claire Saffitz:
I'm going to try it. I'm just so used to only the old-fashioned.
Jessie Sheehan:
No. Of course you are. It was a whole new thing for me. But again, in my book, I was trying to... Maybe you don't have old-fashioned. Maybe you only have instant. You can use it. But anyway, I wanted to tell you.
Claire Saffitz:
I love that. It's the kind of thing where there is no better or no worse. It's just using it in the way that it needs to be used. Right?
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. A hundred percent. The nice thing about old-fashioned for people is it does have texture. And when you use instant, it's less of a texture like individual pieces of oat and it's more just like a crispiness.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, and I love that you said this because this is just like me, but often in a crumb pie, there is some chopped up butter that goes on top of the filling before you add the... or maybe even in all fruit pies. And you said that's the thing I always forget. I always forget that. Yeah. But is that just crumb pies for you?
Claire Saffitz:
No, I think it's pretty much any top crust, any pie with the top crust.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. You're using melted butter in the cinnamon sugar one and then whole little pieces. But I always finish putting on the crumble or the pie and then look over and-
Claire Saffitz:
I know. There are two tablespoons of butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, just waiting for you. I thought this was interesting too about the baking of the crumb-topped pie. In the video, you talk about seeing the juices around the edge, and I've always been taught to look for them in the middle, grab a little toothpick and search. Are the edges enough to tell us?
Claire Saffitz:
No, I think the middle is the thing to look for. I think it's more important in a juicier pie. It's just harder to see in that pie. When you have a lattice, it's really easy to see, or a berry pie or any summer fruit pie. You have to look for bubbling in the center. Otherwise, you've not activated the thickener and it'll be-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. And you can see the raspberries will be all bubbly on the edges, but if you look in the center, they're just like, hi.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. And that's why you should bake it for a very, very long time.
Jessie Sheehan:
So long. Blackberry pie forever.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. Two hours. I've baked a sour cherry pie for two hours and I was like, “It could have gone longer.”
Jessie Sheehan:
All right, let's talk about, even though I love apple pie so much, I could talk about it forever, I did want to mention the blueberry slab pie from Dessert Person as a slab pie lover from way back. First of all, I love that you're assembling it in a classic half sheet pan because often, those recipes, I think when they were first coming out in Martha [Martha Stewart’s magazine], I think that was the first place I saw them, but anyway, they were done in a jelly roll pan in a 10 x 15. And it's just so nice... If you're making a slab pie, make a huge pie.
Claire Saffitz:
Right. I do think it's a trade-off though because I get the jelly roll because it is slightly more manageable. I will say that a half sheet size slab pie, it's just a lot of rolling.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's hard. It is.
Claire Saffitz:
It's a lot of dough and a lot of rolling.
Jessie Sheehan:
And for the dough, because of that, you do have the home baker... prepared in a food processor.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes, because it's basically scaled up four times. I was like, “Just food-process it.” It's too much work to do by hand.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. And then again, when you're talking about, for this particular blueberry slab pie, it's not a lattice crust per se, but it's strips of dough.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. It's much easier than... Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
A hundred percent. I thought that was brilliant.
Claire Saffitz:
It looks so pretty. I love the way it looks.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's gorgeous. And you hook the strips first, then roll out that huge piece of... This is what I wondered. I feel like I've done this in a slab pie, though maybe I'm wrong. Could you roll it out on a piece of parchment and then lift the parchment and put it into your...
Claire Saffitz:
Okay. I've never had a lot of success with that technique because then once you've placed it over the filling, how do you get the parchment out?
Jessie Sheehan:
No, I meant put it down. When you're adding it to the bottom crust, could you lift up the parchment and put it down in?
Claire Saffitz:
Oh. And then just bake it on the parchment?
Jessie Sheehan:
Inside the sheet pan.
Claire Saffitz:
Oh, I never tried that.
Jessie Sheehan:
But just what I sometimes run into trouble because it takes so long to roll out slab pie dough or dough for a slab pie that by the time it's ready, it is-
Claire Saffitz:
It's soft.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's soft. So I've had trouble transferring it to the pan.
Claire Saffitz:
That makes sense.
Jessie Sheehan:
I have rolled it out on the parchment and put the parchment into the sheet.
Claire Saffitz:
That's so smart.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I thought that was a little... That's my addition.
Claire Saffitz:
That's a great idea. Yeah. No, because you're exactly right. It's a huge volume dough. That's a great idea. I never tried it. I thought you meant can you assemble the topping on parchment and then put it on top.
Jessie Sheehan:
No, no, no. That would be weird. Then you'd have to do a flip.
Claire Saffitz:
I've seen people do it where it's like the tablecloth with the table set on top of it, but I've never done it successfully.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right. The filling for this pie is nice and simple and delicious. It's blueberries. Can they be frozen or fresh?
Claire Saffitz:
I do prefer frozen. I think blueberry pie is the perfect use for frozen blueberries.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great.
Claire Saffitz:
And it's so summery, but it would taste amazing in the middle of winter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. Can you tell the listeners the brand that you mentioned that you thought was really great if somebody wants to make a blueberry pie in the middle of the winter and wants to use frozen berries?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I love the Wyman's Of Maine frozen wild Maine blueberries.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that too.
Claire Saffitz:
And I love them because not only do they have great flavor, they're really small, and so you can pack a huge amount of blueberries into a slab pie because they're smaller, they fit into the pie crust. You can just get more in. They're wonderful.
Jessie Sheehan:
Cornstarch is in this filling, some lemon juice, salt, vanilla, ginger, cinnamon, and cardamom. And I love that for this particular slab pie, I'm not even decorating the edges here. Let's just get this baby in the oven.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. It's so much work.
Jessie Sheehan:
We already deserve many pats on the back.
Claire Saffitz:
Right.
Jessie Sheehan:
You call for an egg wash here. And then Demerara sugar. Is that the same as Turbinado?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah, basically. I think not in a technical sense, but I've always seen, when it's labeled at the grocery store, I'm like this is the same thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Because it's funny. I always grab the Turbinado, but you always grab the Demerara.
Claire Saffitz:
The stuff that I reach for is the sugar in the raw, which I think is actually labeled Turbinado.
Jessie Sheehan:
Exactly. Yeah.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. But Demerara is basically the same thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's basically the same thing. And also just a quick tip for people making a slab pie. The pan that the pie is in, you're going to place into another pan, another sheet pan that's been preheated just to help get it baking right away.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. That is because also, if you're using frozen blueberries, it's very cold, and one of the advantages of frozen fruit in any pie is that it increases your work time with the dough because it's chilling your dough basically as you work, but then it takes a very long time for it to heat up in the oven. So that's going to help you get that, because especially on a slab pie, you want really golden brown across the bottom.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then I want to talk about the sour cherry pie briefly. Again from Dessert Person. And I love this, it's sour cherries, which most of us can only get for a certain amount of time in June, July, but you're recommending that even if you picked them fresh or bought them at the farmer's market fresh that we freeze them. Can you tell us? It's the same thing you said earlier, but just reiterate why it's nice to use the frozen berries.
Claire Saffitz:
I think it's especially important for sour cherries because, well, for two reasons. One, it's a lot of work, pitting. I think it's eight cups of sour cherries in that recipe. It's a lot. It takes forever. And every summer, I haven't done this the last couple of summers, but for a stretch every summer, I would buy a flat of sour cherries. I would go to the farmer's market and talk to someone and be like, can I order? I'd order a week in advance. So a flat is 16 pints or eight quarts or something like that. And I would take them home and pit them, and my kitchen would look like a crime scene at the end because they're so juicy, and that cherry juice would just splatter over every resurface.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then all over your fingers.
Claire Saffitz:
My hands would be dyed. It was insane. So it's a lot of work. So I'm like, divide up the work, pit them at a different time in advance and then freeze them. But the freezing is also very important because sour cherries, again, because they're so juicy, the second you mix together a pitted sour cherry and sugar, you're going to get pools of juice, just so much juice being pulled out of that fruit. And when you're assembling a fruit pie, that juice will pool in your crust and make it hard for you to attach a top crust. It's just going to start to cover the pastry in a way that's not helpful. And if you have a very thin layer of fruit juice on your pastry, that's going to burn, and then that creates problems when you're making a juicy fruit pie that you want to bake for two hours or longer. Any little patch that gets some fruit juice on it, that's going to burn.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also feel like it sometimes leaks and then it's hard to get the slab pie or any pie out of the...
Claire Saffitz:
Right. So I actually recommend, it's good if you're going to do a really juicy pie, try baking it in a deep dish because you're less likely to get those juices. If you really mound up the filling, you'll often get... You'll just get so much juice running onto your baking sheet. It's better to do it actually with some higher sides. The freezing prevents all that juice from being pulled out and making it more difficult to form your pie and it's helping keep the crust cold. So yeah, you bake it longer, but it just seems so much easier. It doesn't adversely affect the flavor or the texture at all.
Jessie Sheehan:
People are like, shouldn't I defrost the berry? I'm like, “No, please don't.”
Claire Saffitz:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
This pie has a lattice topping, which is a little bit more complicated, hence it's a Dessert Person recipe. Do you want to share any fast and dirty lattice tips?
Claire Saffitz:
Visually speaking, I like a lattice that is a little thicker, a little more tightly woven. I think it just looks prettier. And I like a lattice that starts with a strip across, bisects the pie, goes straight across the middle, and then one that goes in the other direction. I just like it when you have that, it basically forms a cross in the center, so it's an odd number of strips going in each direction. And other than that, you just basket weave, not that that's easy, watching a YouTube video.
Jessie Sheehan:
There are good instructions. Yeah.
Claire Saffitz:
There's a step by step in the book.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, a hundred percent. And you also mentioned, which is important for people to realize, there is extra cornstarch and sugar with those sour cherries because of all the juice they release.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah, there's a lot of sugar and a lot of thickener, but it's there for a reason.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. And I love that you're, again this came up with apples, but you're pressing on that filling in the pie plate to remove any air pocket before your lattice. And then egg wash for attaching the lattice and brushing the whole pie, and then that Demerara sugar. And then I just wanted to end with fried sour cherry hand pies from What's For Dessert because I'm a hand pie obsessive and fried is my favorite food. So this just sounded so good. I know it's a teeny bit more complicated because you have to cook the cherries.
Claire Saffitz:
They're just so juicy. And in a hand pie, the filling, it's not sitting in anything. So if you're getting lots of juices, then that's really annoying. A fried hand pie takes five minutes or so in the oil and so you're not getting the same evaporation and the thickening of the juices that happen inside the oven.
Jessie Sheehan:
Hence cooking both of the cherries and then reducing the juice and cooking that down as well.
Claire Saffitz:
Right. So when I was growing up, we had a sour cherry tree in our front yard, so that's a very nostalgic thing. My mom used to make sour cherry pies, which she never baked long enough. They were always so liquidy but so delicious, just the best flavor.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yum, yum.
Claire Saffitz:
So I love... Sour cherry pie is probably, as I said at the top, I'm a fruit dessert person, and then going up the pyramid, then I'm an apple dessert person, and then at the very top, sour cherry. So you've highlighted all the favorite recipes. The fried sour cherry hand pies came because it was like I can't not include a variation on a sour cherry pie in the book, and I love that it's not baked. It's fried stove-top. The pie dough gets so flaky in the oil. It's just-
Jessie Sheehan:
And just so people know, it's that same pie dough that we talked about from What's For Dessert. I think you cut it into a total of, if you're making eight pies, so it's a total of 16 little squares. Correct?
Claire Saffitz:
So it's eight larger squares and then it's folded over, a little easier. You could form them any way that you like if you've made hand pies before. It's like a turnover basically style. There's some flexibility in the recipe. So if you want to try frying, if you only want to fry four because maybe eight feels like a lot, you could bake the others. There's instructions for baking them if you want to bake them.
Jessie Sheehan:
So brilliant. Yeah. Which are all so delicious.
Claire Saffitz:
You just cut a little slit.
Jessie Sheehan:
Anything in my hand is way more delicious than in a bowl or a plate. I'm like, oh my gosh. Any frying tips?
Claire Saffitz:
With the sour cherry pies, pie dough isn't super high moisture, so it's actually very key. It's not like you're putting it into the oil and it's bubbling up crazy and splattering and scary. It doesn't even do that much. It just hangs out until it's super golden brown and then you take it out. So I give some tips like use a Dutch oven and something with high sides.
Jessie Sheehan:
Two inches of oil.
Claire Saffitz:
Right. Pay attention to the temperature, the basics.
Jessie Sheehan:
The basics. Anyway, Claire, thank you so much for chatting with me. I just love, love talking baking with you. And I just wanted to tell you that you are my cherry pie.
Claire Saffitz:
Oh, thank you so much. It was so much fun to be here. Thank you for having me.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. You can catch fresh new episodes of She's My Cherry Pie right out of the oven each Saturday. Listen on your favorite podcast platform. I'll be back very soon with some new episodes of Radio Cherry Bombe. Special thanks to OpenTable for sponsoring this episode of Radio Cherry Bombe and partnering with us on our four-city dinner series, Sit With Us. Visit cherrybombe.com/sitwithus or look on OpenTable under experiences to learn more about these special dinners this July in New York, Austin, L.A., and San Francisco. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Joseph Hazan is the studio engineer for Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center. Our producer is Catherine Baker, and our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu. Thanks to you for listening. You are the Bombe.