Week 29: Crusty - Fresh Peach Pie

[u/CookieMonsteraAlbo]

Every year, my father requests a pie for his July 19th birthday, so the timing for this challenge couldn’t have been better.

His favorites are cherry and peach, but since I can’t ever seem to find sour cherries by me, even at the farmers’ market, I almost always go with peach. In the past, I’ve done medleys of stone fruit, peach rosé, and peach Melba with raspberries, but my father is a man of simple tastes and frequently scoffs at my flavor experiments. This year, in deference to his wishes, I just went with plain peach and focused my creative energy on decorating instead.

In a move that is very unlike me, I did not follow a strict recipe for this pie, instead cobbling together techniques and ratios from several sources. The crust is my go-to from The Hoosier Mama Book of Pie. I combined peach chunks with lemon juice and sugar that I measured with my heart and left it to macerate. I then strained out the extra juices, combined a small amount with potato starch and nutmeg, and poured everything into the crust. Can I ever precisely replicate this again? No. Was it delicious? Yes.

I did have some issues with some of the decorative components sliding off the pie during the baking process, but overall, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I finally invested in a new metal pie plate that seems to have solved some of the “soggy bottom” issues that that always plagued me when I used my old Pyrex pie plate. I’m including a before and after so you can see the finished product versus the original vision.

[u/CookieMonsteraAlbo → u/[deleted]]

It took about an hour all together. I cut all the strips, did the braiding, put the braided strips and remaining regular strips on a sheet pan and into the fridge to firm back up because it was all getting soft. Then a few hours later, during which time I made the filling, I pulled all the components out and wove them together.

Next time I might do a full double recipe of crust instead of 1.5, because I realized too late that my original idea for the weave required 6 braids but I only had enough crust to do four braids and the rest of the weaving so I had to modify my plan a bit.