Apple Pie at its Best!

As American as Apple Pie…. That brings about emotion, doesn’t it? And in our family we love our apple pie … not necessarily to just eat. Especially our Favorite French Apple Pie! I started baking pies as a preteen … Not surprising to my children. But what they don’t know … my father was the first to show me how to bake an apple pie. Now this was odd in any day! My father was an athlete, always golfing in his spare time. And had never shown any interest in cooking before this … other than barbecue. But his mother, my Grandmother Rose, was always in the kitchen. So, I concluded he was quietly observant as a young boy. And craving apple pie as he remembered it. His most important step was to precook the apples to assure that they would be fully cooked after baking. What my son, Stephen, likes to refer to as the applesauce pie. Stephen didn’t taste my dad’s pie and I don’t use this method. But I do like to bake my apple pie until the apples are no longer al dente. (Al dente is not used to describe fruit? Oop.) This is the applesauce bake. You can be sure when I bake this for Stephen’s birthday I strive to keep the apples a little firm. This is sometimes done by baking the pie less time, or using 3 different apple types that cook at different rates. Oh, one last trick … not cutting the apples pieces smaller than 1/8 of a large apple. But the tenderness of the cooked apples is not the only thing that comes under scrutiny. The crust … two crust versus one, versus French topping (brown sugar vs white, flour vs oatmeal), versus butter crust, vs vodka crust, vs vegetable shortening crust. You get the picture.

I just love this pie!

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