We Must Have a Pie

By SAM SIFTON, NYT

“We must have a pie,” David Mamet wrote in “Boston Marriage,” his 1999 play about Victorian women struggling not to talk like Mamet characters. “Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”

It may well be true. For much of the nation, this is the season of deep winter blues, lake-effect depression, the sad pull of midwinter dismay. There is either too much snow or not nearly enough. The furnace clicks on regardless. Night comes fast.

Introduce an apple pie into the equation, though, and watch what happens — as a result not just of the pie itself, but also of the process of making it. Apple pie is a weekend project to slow the baker’s heart rate and restore belief in happiness. The scent of fruit softening, kissed by cinnamon, of buttery crust, of sugar caramelizing — these can combine into a fragrance of redemption for the cook and everyone else. The taste delivers bliss.

Of all the great pie bakers in New York City, the current champion is probably a young woman named Kierin Baldwin, who runs the pastry department at the Dutch, an American restaurant in SoHo. Baldwin serves properly fancy-dan desserts on her menu — a winter sundae with cranberry-pomegranate sorbet, cinnamon ice cream, maple caramel and brioche currently leads that list. These desserts are quite good.

But for the cognoscenti who think of themselves as Dutchmen and try to eat in the restaurant monthly at least, Baldwin’s chief business is pie. Her crusts neither shatter nor wilt but taste of flake and butter and salt; they encase fillings that are thick without being starchy and intense without being gooey. These are pies to offer the comfort of a family-movie third act. They are intensely delicious.

And for a home cook hoping to step up the pie game, Baldwin is a godsend. “I can get pretty geeky about baking pie,” she said in an interview. “But it’s a mind-set. It’s not difficult.”

Advice from a master, then: Start with a dough made from flour, cold butter and shortening, and scramble an egg yolk into the ice water that will bring it all together. Most pastry recipes advise strongly against “overworking” the dough, lest the crust turn tough. Baldwin tacks left. “You need to work the dough a little so that it will hold its shape,” she said. “You don’t want it so delicate that it won’t hold up to the filling.” The yolk helps a great deal in this regard, even in its tiny measure. So does a good, strong measure of fat.

Baldwin blind-bakes her bottom crusts before she fills the pies, cooking them beneath parchment paper and a layer of Goya beans she bought at the supermarket to use as pie weights. She doesn’t like the texture that otherwise forms below the fruit, she says.

You may well agree. But my experiments suggest a more-than-credible result without the blind baking — and in less time. For the weekend baker struggling only to amaze friends and family, time spent cooking is a crucial distinction. It’s not a kayak we’re building here. It’s pie for dinner. Tonight.

Nevertheless, all should heed Baldwin’s exhortation to precook the apples for the filling. It concentrates their flavor. “Apple pies that have crunchy, raw apples in them are a pet peeve of mine,” she said. Peel and core the fruit, cut it into slices, then macerate them in a plume of sugar. Cook these soft with a splash of acid (like lemon juice or cider vinegar) and a hint of cinnamon and allspice, then add some starch to thicken the whole. Allow the mixture to cool completely before using it in the pie.

(More advice, on apple varieties: “My preference is for straight honeycrisp, or pink ladies,” Baldwin said. “They have nice natural acidity and they don’t break down.” True statement!)

Now assemble the confection: crust below, cool filling above, more crust laid on top of this, the package crimped together artfully with the tines of a fork. Paint the top with an egg wash, cut steam vents and dust with sugar. Slide the result into a hot oven, on top of a hot baking sheet. This can catch any overflow of fruit and sugar, should the seal burst when the fruit gets to bubbling and the crust goes gold in the heat.

Which is when it’s done. Let cool for a couple of hours, ideally somewhere you can smell it. Serves eight, though you can cut it in four, as Yogi Berra famously required. “I don’t think I can eat eight,” he said.