Blueberry Pie

Ok so, after the muffins, I still had about close to 2 pounds of blueberries left. As it turned out, the dozen muffins I made earlier this week didn't actually require that many berries. So I started thinking...what dessert would require the use of a lot of blueberries? Pie, of course!

I found a blueberry pie recipie that looked good and modified it slightly to this:

INGREDIENTS
* 3/4 cup white sugar
* 4 tablespoons cornstarch
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 4 cups fresh blueberries
* 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie
* 1 tablespoon butter

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Mix sugar, cornstarch, salt, cinnamon, and sprinkle over blueberries.
3. Line pie dish with one pie crust. Pour berry mixture into the crust, and dot with butter. Cut remaining pastry into 1/2 - 3/4 inch wide strips, and make lattice top. Crimp and flute edges.
4. Bake pie for about 50 minutes, or until crust is golden brown.

You'll have to make your pie crust in advance and allow at least an hour for it to sit in the fridge, so plan ahead. I would suggest 2-3 hours, for good measure. This will ensure that it's easy to work with. Use this pie crust recipie, and only this recipie from here on out~! I swear by it! I have searched high and low for the perfect pie crust recipie and have gone through many that were either too soggy to work with or didn't taste buttery and flaky like it should. This recipie gives you the perfect balance between taste and texture. It's also the easiest to work with- trust me, this is an essential element. You'll thank me later when it's not sticking to your hands and falling apart! =)

For the crust, follow the recipie and after you've completed all the steps in the food processor, pour the dough out into a bowl. It should look something like this:

You will find that it's really soft and super easy to mold. You don't have to kneed it or anything, just gently press the dough together with the palm of your hands until it forms a ball. Try not to play with it too much, the butter in it will start to melt and it will get messy! This is will make it harder for you to work with the dough and you will end up having to refrigerate it for longer. You will only need to press on it about 3-4 times to form something like this:

The recipe tells you to divide it in half and wrap it up. I find that it helps a lot if you divide it into two unequal pieces. Break the dough up into a 60/40 split like the picture below. You will use the bigger half for the bottom layer, which requires more dough. The smaller half will be perfect for making the lattice on top. Also, here are 2 tips that will help you later: (1) the more round you can make the balls, the easier it will be later when you roll it out. Make it into a ball, and then flatten it slightly so that it has a disk shape. This makes it super easy for you to roll out later. You can just set it down on your mat and roll... you don't have to be kneading and trying to shape it later. The heat from your hands will make the dough soft, soggy, and difficult to work with. (2) make sure you wrap the dough up tightly. I usually use two layers. This will keep the dough from drying out. Now you're ready to pop it into the fridge.

After much trial and error with pie crusts, I find that if you follow my instructions completely, you will have the ultimate buttery & flaky crust, as well as a very easy time working with it (which can sometimes be tricky). The rest of the process is pretty easy. Take the bigger piece of dough and roll it out so that it's slightly bigger in diameter than your pie pan. Make sure to apply even pressure when you're rolling out the dough, so that it is consistently thick throughout. This will ensure that you get a evenly baked, golden brown bottom crust.

Place the rolled out pie crust into your pan and even out the edges, cutting off the excess.

Place your pie filling inside. See pie recipe above.

Now roll out the smaller ball of pie crust and cut out strips for the lattice. You'll see in the picture below that I'm using a fluted pastry wheel to get the pretty edges. If you don't have one, you can use a pizza roller or a sharp knife to cut straight edges.

The trick to building the lattice is to place all the horizontal strips first and then start on weaving in the vertical strips starting from the middle of the pie. Start in the middle, work your way to the left. Then go back to the middle and work your way to the right. This is the best way to do it because: since the strips are so thin an narrow, if you touch them too many times, they will fall apart on you. So if you build your vertical strips from left to right, you end up touching the right side of the horizontal strips too much, making the butter melt.

The finished product!

Ok so I apologize for not having pictures of the pie after it was baked. I assure you that it was a beautiful golden brown. I'm using this old-school camera and it conveniently lost my "after" shots and told me I had to reformat the SD card! I didn't even know SD cards needed to be formatted. I went to go cut out a slice of it to re-take pictures but the entire pie had been eaten! No kidding! Guess it was a good recipie! =) Try it out and let me know how it turned out!