Deep Dish Apple Pie

Oct 20

Oct 20 Deep Dish Apple Pie

This was my first time making an apple pie! And the first time I’ve ever made a lattice crust. While I’m sure it shows in the visuals, I was pretty happy with the results for a first attempt, and more importantly, it was everything I was hoping for in terms of taste. All the traditional fall flavors of tart apples, brown sugar, cinnamon, and cloves encased in a buttery, flaky crust.

I chose a recipe from Natasha’s Kitchen recipe blog. It was very straightforward with no pre-cooking of the apples required. The recipe cleverly uses a caramel-like sauce as a thickening agent that blends with the juices from the apples as the pie bakes so nothing is too sweet or cloying. She also includes an enthusiastic video of the entire process.

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Deep Dish Apple Pie Recipe:

Recommended Recipe:
Natasha's Kitchen Apple Pie

Yield:
1, deep dish 9-inch pie

Difficulty:
Moderate (but probably easy if you’re used to making double crust pies)

Equipment:
Deep dish pie plate (This is the one I used.)

The recipe says you can use a standard pie plate, but I don’t recommend it. I think you’d end up with mountains of overflowing filling while baking.

How I made it:

The filling / caramel sauce: The recipe calls for granulated sugar, but with all of the fall flavorings I thought brown sugar would yield a deeper flavor. So where the recipe calls for 1 cup brown sugar, I substituted 200 grams of light brown sugar. The dark caramel color sauce also provides a nice visual contrast to the crust.

The apples: I used Granny Smith and tossed them with 1 tsp cinnamon, ¼ tsp cloves and ¼ tsp allspice. I followed her instructions and sliced the apples very thin. I think next time I would slice them slightly thicker.

Baking: I managed to avoid an uncooked or soggy bottom – even using a ceramic pie dish which always bakes slower – by setting a rimmed baking sheet inside the oven while it was preheating so it was very hot by the time I placed the pie on it. (Lessons learned from pizza making!) The baking sheet does double duty by catching any overflowing juices as well.

The crust: I doubled my Single Pie Crust Dough recipe. It consistently yields good results for me, and I knew I’d have enough dough to line a deep dish pie plate and make the lattice top too.

The next time I make a lattice top, I think I’ll adjust it so it’s all butter rather than mix of butter and shortening. The shortening is perfect for single crust pies and galettes, but it made some of the lattice strips a little soft and harder to work with. Butter firms up more when chilled.