Make it at Home: Peach Pie

Peach PIE? I know more often than not peaches are made into a cobbler, but with all of the yummy peaches I got at the market, I wanted to do something a little less "run of the mill". And let me tell you, this pie was darn good for my first one, if I do say so myself. Of course, I can't take all the credit, boyfriend did help, he was making the crust while I was on peach duty.

Here's what you'll need:

• 6-7 peaches
• Sugar
• Flour
• Lemon juice
• Water
• Butter
• Salt

I started by peeling and dicing my peaches. I know normally the peaches are in slices, but I liked the idea of diced. When they were all peeled and diced, I put them in a small amount of water and sugar in a boiling pot on the stove. I wanted to make sure they were sweet! I let them simmer for 20 to 30 minutes and then I strained them. I put the strainer over the bowl because I wanted to save the peach juice for later. When the peaches were cooled, I put them in a mixing bowl with 1 cup of sugar, 4 tablespoons of flour, and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. Set it in the fridge while the dough is being made.

I think one of the reasons I've never made a pie before is because I thought making the dough would be complicated. I've helped my dad make a few pies before and he uses a recipe from my great grandmother with lard and all these other complicated ingredients and it has to set and rise and blah, blah, blah. Don't get me wrong, the pie crust made that way is delicious, but we found a simple four ingredient dough recipe. Bryan mixed together 1 1/3 cups of flour and 1/2 a tablespoon of salt. Cut 4 ounces of butter in until the mixture is nice and crumbly. Then add 5 tablespoons of ice water until it's doughy and can be rolled out. Bryan did say that he wished he couldn've added a little sugar to the dough. I liked it the way it was, but if you want a sweet dough, I would add some sugar, at most 1/2 a cup- probably a little less. Then we floured the counter so he could stretch and roll the dough. He put the dough on a sheet pan and put it in the fridge for 15 minutes. Last, he cut the dough into long thin strips so we could make a lattice crust on top.

I bought just a regular graham cracker pie crust from the store, and Bryan's crust went on top, but if you want to make the top and bottom, just double the ingredients for the dough and make two. So, I put the peaches in the graham cracker crust and we started weaving the dough strips on top to make the lattice crust.

It's easy if you lay out several strips all in one direction and then fold back every other one to lay a strip going in the opposite direction (startng in the middle) down and then fold back the alternating strips. That soulds a little complicated as I type it, I know. But look how pretty the top is! If you're just going to make a flat pie crust on top, cut a few holes in the middle.

 

 

We had a little bit of dough leftover to make some jelly turnovers. All we did was roll out a little bit of dough again and fill it with some jelly we had in the fridge. We made three all together, two apple and one strawberry preserve. Make sure to slit some holes in the top so the steam can get out while it's baking. These turnovers only need to bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until the crust is golden.

 

 

Put it in the oven at 375 for 30 or so minutes, or until the top is golden. Just make sure not to burn the bottom.

It was sooo good. I must confess I may have eaten a few warm slices for breakfast with a glass of milk...