Mini Pecan & Apple-Maple-Bacon Pies (Take 1)

In my desire to best pie crust, I’m putting more effort into making pies, particularly mini pies. I like the mini pies because they offer the perfect little bite of pie and, because of their shape, offer a higher crust to filling ratio than a regular pie. Mark Bittman recently made a rather divisive comment about pies, saying that the crust offers nothing more than "heft and calories." Love him though I do, I have to vehemently disagree with Mr. Bittman here. As far as I’m concerned, filling is a vehicle for pie crust and not the other way around. I eat pie for the crust. And though I've yet to master this art, I surge forth in my quest to make the perfect pie crust.

The title of this post is followed by “Take 1” because neither of these pies turned out perfectly. Therefore, I’m not going to provide the recipes to my sub-par pies, but I am recounting these trials because I believe you can learn just as much about cooking from your failures as you can from your successes. In all, they were ample starts on the road to good pie.

Maple Pecan Pies 
I’ve recently decided that I want to try to make pastries if not, in actuality, healthier, then at least less bad. I’ve read a lot about white whole wheat flour and, though I’d never used it, wanted to see how it fared in a pie crust application. I also wanted to see how pecan pie would be with maple syrup accounting for part of the sugar and a decrease in the overall amount of sugar in the filling. The recipe I used was just a slight variation on the recipe that comes on the back of the Karo corn syrup bottle: instead of the Karo I used 1 cup of maple syrup and only ½ cup of brown sugar, instead of 1 cup of each, thereby decreasing the total sugar by 25%. The filling turned okay, if a bit typical. I was surprised that I didn’t taste maple at all, just sweetness, and that with even ½ cup of sugar less, I still felt that I could have easily cut more sugar without sacrificing taste. It was good, but it wasn’t any different from pecan pie fillings I’ve made in the past.

The crust was another story entirely. The main problem with using whole wheat flour, I found, was that whole wheat flour drinks up a lot more water than white flour and in pie crust, more water equals a less tender, less flaky, less scrumptious crust. There was also a distinct wheaty flavor that was out of place in a pie crust. It wasn’t inedible – in fact, I got rave reviews of the pies at work, though I suspect that had more to do with the fact that I made them and no one’s going to tell me I made a crap pie – I wasn’t happy with it. It took me a while, but I finally realized what the crust tasted like that made it so disappointing: it tasted like frozen pie crust. For this crust aficionado, that was a no-go. I shall head back to the drawing board on the Maple Pecan Pies. 

Apple Maple Bacon Pie 

The impetus of this pie was the Sautéed Apples & Bacon recipe I picked up from JoC a few months ago. My thought was, wouldn’t apple pie be great if it were sweetened by maple syrup instead of sugar and studded with little bits of bacon? What’s not to like about that?

I decided to use two Braeburn apples and a Golden Delicious in my filling. I chose the Braeburns because they have a very hearty apple flavor (I do not like them raw…I only like Fuji apples raw because they don’t actually taste like apples, but that quality is not so great for a cooked apple) and the Golden Delicious because, well, I don’t know but it seemed like a good idea to get a Golden Delicious. Perhaps because I used them in the Sautéed Apples & Bacon I knew they stood up well to heat and wouldn’t get mealy.

I sliced up the apples thinly and cut the slices into thirds so they would fit in the muffin tins better. I cooked up and finely chopped a couple slices of bacon (I used Hormel Black Label because it has a nice, assertive smoky taste) and then sautéed the apples in a bit of the rendered bacon fat. I then stirred in about ¼ cup of maple syrup and 1 teaspoon of ground ginger. I didn’t use cinnamon because the idea of cinnamon and bacon did not appeal to me; the spiciness of ginger seemed like it would meld with the bacon much better. I gave the mixture a taste and found it lacking something. I added a pinch of salt and then surveyed my spices to figure out what I could add to punch things up. Cinnamon was still out and allspice seemed wrong, so I threw in a dash of nutmeg. I gave everything another taste and knew immediately that nutmeg had no place in this filling. It didn’t taste terrible, but it was obviously not what the apples needed. Although good, Apple-Maple-Bacon Pie filling perfection will have to wait for another time.

As for the crust, I used 50% all purpose flour and 50% white whole wheat flour this time. The result? Not much different from 100% white whole wheat flour. I was able to get away with less water, but when I rolled out the dough it cracked and tore miserably. I patted the torn circles of crust together in the muffin tin, but my plan to have a full upper crust was completely dashed and I just fashioned together a makeshift lattice with strips of dough. For a bit of crunch and extra flavor, I sprinkled some turbinado sugar and some grey sea salt on top of the crust.

The pies came out of the oven all bubbly and golden looking. I let them cool for a little and took a bite. They were…okay. Most notably the filling needed more sugar. What tasted good in the pan was not sufficient for a pie filling nor did it provide the right texture. See, when I eat apple pie, first I eat all the apples. Then I eat the top crust. Then I eat the luscious, gooey, bottom crust covered in all that sweetness that bleeds out of the sugared apples in the oven. Sadly, there was no apple-y goodness on my bottom crust here. While the bacon did add a lovely smoky, saltiness to the filling, the ginger was entirely absent. And the crust? Well, it seems that even at an equal split of white whole wheat and all purpose flour, there was still that unmistakable wheaty flavor. Even though it may be healthier, it’s not what I want in my pie crust. I’d rather savor a small serving of pie with perfect, unhealthy crust than a lackluster pie that satisfies none of my pie desires.

It’s back to all white flour crusts I go. As for the filling, I’m thinking maybe some freshly grated ginger could turn up the flavor a bit. I’m also curious to see how some sage would work with the apples and the bacon, although I don’t know that I could mix sage with ginger. We shall see, for mark my words, I am not done with apples, maple, and bacon yet.

Well, Butter My Biscuits!

Back in the summer I signed up for several cooking-related meetup groups, one which being What's Cookin' Chicago?, one of largest of its kind. It took me a while, but I went to my first meetup with this group last month, a class about making biscuits. Now, I love me some biscuits. If I’m being honest, I love me some KFC biscuits, but the part of me that believes that anything home-cooked is a million times better—and usually better for you—than anything born from a fast food freezer tries to pretend that isn’t true. But, every time I’ve tried to make biscuits I’ve failed to produce that wonderful, fluffy, buttery, golden goodness that comes from behind that chicken counter.

Unfortunately, the day that I showed up to take my biscuit class, the studio’s oven wasn’t working. This meant that while we would learn about composing the biscuit dough, we wouldn’t actually get to bake it and taste it. To account for this snag, Joelen, the group’s organizer, had baked some beforehand so we would know what the doughs would produce.

I learned two important things at this biscuit class. 1) There are two types of biscuits: fluffy and flaky. 2) I prefer fluffy biscuits. While I did realize that some biscuits have that lovely, all-encompassing, melt in your mouth kind of feel and others do not, I never realized that it was due to two specific baking methods. The main difference is that the fluffy biscuits contain cake flour and are formed by lightly shaping the dough into balls and then pressing down on them to flatten them a little. Flaky biscuits use only all-purpose flour and are rolled out. The dough is then folded in on itself, then rolled again, then folded, then rolled, so you end up with layers of dough with thin sheets of butter in between, much like with puff pastry. (So, I’m told. I’ve never made my own puff pastry.) Both samples of the finished biscuits were good, but I knew immediately that it was the fluffy variety that I had been searching for all along.

Although we didn’t get to bake any biscuits that night, Joelen sent us the recipes she had used so we could try them at home. And try them I did. I decided to make two variations of the fluffy biscuit, the first with nice savory dill, and the second with sharp cheddar and bacon. Because what’s not better with bacon? The basic ingredients were all-purpose flour, the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, salt, butter, and buttermilk. You can then change up the biscuits anyway you choose—add some thyme or some green onions or some blue cheese or some crumbled sausage, whatever you like.

 

 

The biscuit method of baking is similar to the pie method of baking wherein you mix your dry ingredients, cut in your cold butter, and then mix in your wet ingredients and any of the special add-ins. I did just that, mixing in my dill and my cheddar and bacon in last. There seemed to be some dry parts of the dough that didn’t mix in well with the addition of the buttermilk and had crumbled at the bottom of the bowl, but I just tried to incorporate them as much as I could. As instructed, I divided the dough into 12 portions and shaped them into balls, pressing down on them lightly when I placed them on the baking sheet. The biscuits got one more brushing of buttermilk before going in the oven.

 And when they came out? Heaven. Beautiful, hot, meltingly good, scrumptious biscuits. I think I used a bit too much dill, because the flavor was slightly over-powering, but other than that both varieties came out amazingly well. I shall never want for tender, fluffy biscuits again. At only $25, the class was well worth it. I definitely plan on taking more.

With dill

With sharp cheddar and bacon