Easy as pie is a flat-out lie!

After a six-month wait, my brand new Hess Pottery handcrafted pie plate arrived — just in time for Thanksgiving and my annual attempt to bake an edible apple pie.

What a beauty it is with its unglazed red clay finish, extra deep capacity and sloped sides.

For the time being, I'm merely admiring my plate's workmanship. I hesitate to use it because, truth be told, I'm an unworthy owner.

In my quest to prepare a decent apple pie, I have accumulated a massive inventory of tools, each "guaranteed" to produce results that will wow my guests.

Pie pans, you ask? Not even Julia Child owned more than I do: nonstick black steel, deep dish, ceramic, Pyrex, stonewear, glazed and unglazed.

Take your pick among my rolling pin collection: wooden ones in all shapes and sizes, tapered French, handled maple, nylon, stainless steel and solid white plastic. My current favorite is one my grandmother used, a hallow glass design made for holding ice cubes and cold water to help keep pie pastry cold.

Although I have dozens of boards on which to roll out my dough, I lean toward my marble slab that I can chill in my freezer.

My numerous unsuccessful efforts to master pie baking has made me a student of the art. I've read dozens — possibly hundreds — of apple pie baking articles. Most, supplemented with detailed drawings, misleadingly contain "Easy" in their title.

I have a library shelf's worth of pie baking books. The two that I most often refer to are a 700-page monster by Rose Levy Beranbaum, "The Pie and Pastry Bible," and John T. Edge's more manageable 150-page volume "Apple Pie, An American Story"

Edge's book is one of his four part series on what he calls essential American food that, in addition to apple pie, include fried chicken, doughnuts and hamburgers. They are a must read.

But, despite hours spent studying pie, I can't bake a pie anyone is brave enough to eat.

Nothing in baking is as challenging as turning out a decent pie. So much can go wrong. One small error will overwhelm whatever may have gone right and will designate the pie for dog treats.

Bakers cannot even agree on which apples to use. Recommended apples — Northern Spy, Jonagold and Baldwins — are not readily available. You'll have to mail order them at great expense from the Upper Michigan Peninsula.

When your finished product with its pricey apples is as lousy as if you used supermarket varieties, you'll know what true frustration is.

In addition to the wrong apples, here's a partial list of pitfalls that await the novice pie baker: will your dough be too dry or too wet? If it is one or the other, you can't roll it out. Will it, after rolling, more resemble a circular pie shape or the outline of Texas? Will the crust be tough, overdone on top or soggy on the bottom? Will your apple filling be wet and runny or will the slices stick together as if they were glued?

Any of these are the kiss of death to the pastry chef.

Despite my long history of baking lousy pies, I remain undaunted and am ready to proceed fearlessly this Thanksgiving.

I have my new pan, my grandmother's rolling pin and my marble board. My apples are Pink Lady's from Lodi's Smit Ranch. The only way apples could be fresher is if I picked them myself.

I'm using mellow pastry blend flour developed by the Vermont-based King Arthur Flour Company … "foolproof" or so I'm told.

If I'm successful and, despite my track record, I'm sure I will be, I'll share the step-by-step process in my Christmas column as my present to readers.

In the meantime, I'll add this important closing note.

Your botched pie can be put to good use. Put a small wedge in a blender, add a cup of milk and three scoops of vanilla ice cream, whiz it up … and viola, the apple pie a la mode milk shake.

Pretty tasty, if you ask me.

Joe Guzzardi is an instructor at the Lincoln Technical Academy. Send him mail at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

Reader Feedback

To Lodian wrote on Nov 21, 2007 11:23 AM:

" I sent a reply, but have no idea as to why LNS would sensor the comment. I said, sadly, my mother died. She was always meaning to type out the recipes for the Dutch crunch and her homemade apple pies, but it was all in her head. A pinch of this and a dash of that. Everybody loved her pies. She died of lung cancer 3 years ago now due to being a heavy smoker. I wish I had those recipes to carry on my mother's pie baking tradition. "

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Dan wrote on Nov 20, 2007 12:06 PM:

" Bake the bottom pie crust first (unbrowned) so it's not raw and add a can of apple sauce to your sliced apples before filling the pie. The apple sauce keeps the slices from fusing together. Make sure you add some salt to the apples (only a little) and to the crust. Don't over work the crust. Use butter, not shortening. "

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To Lodian wrote on Nov 20, 2007 8:57 AM:

" Unfortunately my mother died. She was always meaning to get around to typing up the recipe, but she did it pretty much by memory and a pinch of this and a dash of that. I tried, once, to make a pie when she told me over the phone years ago how to do it, and it was a disaster. The last time she made that pie was pretty much the last time we would see her alive. She died of lung cancer due to years of heavy smoking 3 years ago now. "

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Pie Baker wrote on Nov 17, 2007 6:27 PM:

" Joe, You are wasting a lot of time and money with all of the fancy ingredients and paraphernalia. Other than crisp pie apples, you don't need anything not already on hand to make to-die-for-pie. It's technique that makes the difference. You can roll the crust with a towel bar on the kitchen table if you know what you're doing. Go watch someone who knows how--you'll be an expert in no time. "

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Lodian wrote on Nov 17, 2007 1:03 PM:

" To: "my mother made the best": Care to share her recipe? :-) I would love to have it! "

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my mother made the best wrote on Nov 17, 2007 10:06 AM:

" crumble topped apple pie you would ever want to eat. And when she made regular apple pies, the crust was flaky to perfection, and the pie filling was a mile high it seemed. And I have never eaten an apple pie yet, and I am 49 yrs old, that even comes close to the apple pies my mother used to make. Store bought pies are worthless, but I have never eaten anybody's homemade apple pie that even comes close. So, good luck. "

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