6.23.2008

Martha's 4th of July Blueberry Pie

Not bad for a 1st attempt!

As I was flipping through Dorie's book, the picture of the blueberry pie happened to catch my husband's eye. it's amazing how an image can resurrect so many memories! Just by seeing the picture he was transported back to his grandma's house in Pennsylvania- coming to visit and she would have a fresh blueberry pie waiting. I found out it had been several years since he had had freshly baked blueberry pie and I realized then that I knew what my next baking task would be. Mind you, the closest I've gotten to making my own pie was watching my Mom. So I did the best I could, realizing this was going to be a learning experience for me!

For whatever reason, I decided to make Martha's blueberry pie instead (from the Baking Handbook) and pretty much followed all of the directions except for the crust. The top layer of the 4th of July pie had stars cut out from the rolled crust and I knew that was pushing it for me (and I didn't have a star cut out anyway). The crust ended up being the hardest part for me. Especially rolling it out. Looking at the pictures, you can see how thin the crust was on the bottom (ignore the shadow on the left side of the pan). While I was rolling out the crust sections of it just kept breaking off (and I was determined to show the crust who was boss so I kept sticking it back together). I wonder if the problem was, the food processor just wasn't big enough to really give the crust a chance to get together.

Okay, so maybe the crust was a little thin on the bottom


Fresh blueberry filling! Nice & sweet!

Overall, my husband was very happy with how the blueberry pie turned out. Could it have been better? Absolutely. Could it have been worse? Even more absolutely. Either way, if someone had told me 1 year ago that I would be making a blueberry pie for our anniversary, I would have laughed. :-) 
Happy 1st Anniversary honey!!!!!

1 comment:

Bungalow Barbara said...

Good work on your first pie! It looks to me like your pie dough didn't have enough liquid added. The amount you add can vary a lot. You want to add just enough that the dough is pliable, not so much that it is sticky. I think this is the trickiest part of learning to make pie dough.

Other than that, just keep the butter or shortening cold, and give the dough a "rest" of at least an hour before rolling it out. Soon your husband will be calling you the "pie queen" the way mine does!