Berry Pie with a French Pastry Pie Crust

Pie. This is my husband's favorite dessert. Olallieberry Pie is his favorite pie.  He's been known to, ahem, devour an entire pie over the course of a few days.   The funny thing is, with the exception of pumpkin pie, I'm not a huge fan of pie crust.  I'd rather make "crisps" by filling ramekins with pie filling and topping it with an oatmeal,flour,  brown sugar, (and sometimes added nuts) and butter topping. Sublime.

Rolling out pie dough, surprisingly, can be therapeutic for me.  I finally mastered the art of making successful pie crusts-- learning the secret of working with cold ingredients and not overworking the dough.

I thank America's Test Kitchen for showing me how to keep pie crust dough from tearing and sticking, and how to easily drape it on a rolling pie and to unfurl it over a mound of pie filling. Easy Peasy, right?  Wrong.  At least, that's what happened with this pie crust recipe.

I'm always looking for new variations of pie/tart dough.  I chose this recipe, because it uses shortening (which pie experts swear is the ingredient to use for tender crusts).  A traditional American pie crusts uses lard or shortening, water and flour.  This variation adds one egg, sugar and white vinegar, and promises to be easy to work with and very tender to enjoy.

I have a pastry cutter, but my food processor makes pie crusting preparation a snap.  Once it's pulsed together, I press it into shape, divide it, place it in plastic wrap and let it rest for at least an hour.

I am addicted to listening to audio books, while I'm in the kitchen (or cleaning the house, or commuting to work).   I was engrossed into listening to a story, and began to work with this pie dough.  I'm not gonna lie, but this pie crust had plenty of challenges.  It's soft, despite that I had chilled it for a while. It began to crack... a lot.  I'd try to drape it over my rolling pin and it would disintegrate.

Son: "Mom, are you okay?"
Mom: "Why do you ask"? 
Son: "You sounded like you had G-Rated tourettes. You were kinda cussing up a storm."

Oops.

I had to resort to rolling the dough on parchment paper, then lift the whole thing up (mutter a prayer of both forgiveness and hope) and flipped the whole thing into the pie plate.  Still I had to patch up the crust-- so, if anyone has encountered similar challenges, please share any tips with me!

I baked this pie for our Labor Day barbecue.  I live just minutes away from Driscolls Berries, so I can buy fresh berries way past summer. (Lucky me, I know. ) I decided to make a berry mix of fresh blueberries, raspberries and blackberries-- but, wait!

We have frozen olallieberries, that were grown in our own backyard.

With that said, you can bake berry pies year-round, because frozen berries work just as well as fresh-- you don't even need to thaw them before baking.

Have you ever baked a fruit pie, and the filling runs out after you cut into the first slice?  I've used cornstarch and tapioca, which does the job well.  My favorite ingredient is Instant ClearJel, that I order online with King Arthur flour.  I find that cornstarch kinda of "clouds" the look of the baked filling.

I no longer need to measure when I'm making fruit pie filling, and have gotten better at eye-balling how much to use.  With this pie I used one pint, each, of fresh berries-- with the exception of the frozen olallieberries.  I like to add the zest of one small lemon, and the juice.  Because olallieberries can be a bit tart, I whisked together 3/4 cup sugar, and five tablespoons of ClearJel-- adjust the sugar according to the sweetness of the berries.  (If I didn't have ClearJel, I would use about 3 Tablespoons of cornstarch or tapioca.)  Gently toss all the ingredients and set aside.

Once I won the pie crust battle, I piled in the prepared berries, and dotted the fruit with small pats of unsalted butter.

Place the top layer of pie crust, crimp and trim and then I like to brush on an egg wash and dust with sprinkling sugar-- for a crunchy texture.

 Place the pie on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake at 350F for about 50 minutes, or until golden brown.

It's not easy to get my boys to refrain from cutting into the pie, while still warm.  However, the pie filling has to "set" or it will become a river of sugar, sweet deliciousness.

This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the moment of truth-- the pie filling has set. Yay!  Now, for the crust tasting...

TASTING NOTES:  Despite my frustrations with how fragile the pie dough was to work with...it's definitely very tender and delicious. I used Butter-Flavor Crisco, because that's what I had on hand. The vinegar was not detected, in any way.  Here I am, a self-proclaimed, non-fan of pie crusts, and I ate every single bite.   As for the berry filling-- it tasted like summer, with a perfect balance of sweet and tart.  You cannot taste the lemon, but it adds that lovely brightness in the background.

This pie lasted for one day.  The next day, I returned for a second slice-- and the pie pan was in the sink. Empty.  Sigh.

Ah, but  Pumpkin Season is so close!  While I'm sad to say goodbye to the last of our garden tomatoes and basil, I'm looking forward to making soups, stews and home baked bread.  Oh, and I'm sure I'll be making a pumpkin pie before Thanksgiving.  But, first, I want to make Cathy's Glazed Apple Pie Bars-- they look perfect for Fall!

A printable recipe card is at the end of this post.