We Have Only Ever Made Apple Pie One Way. This Week We Are Trying the Other.
Since the beginning, our apple pie filling has been made the same way. Apples cooked down in a pot with sugar, spices and cornstarch until the filling is set, then into the shell. This week we are running the other method against it, and we want you to be the judge.
Come in today, Friday or Saturday and taste it against our standard. Tell us which one you would rather buy. Your answer decides what goes in our pies this fall.
How we have always done it
Cook the fruit first. The apples go into the pot with the sugar, the spices and the cornstarch, and they come out as a finished filling. The oven is only there to bake the crust and the topping.
That method earned its place. It is consistent, it is thick exactly where you decided it should be, and it can be made ahead, which matters more in a working kitchen than anybody likes to admit.
It is not bulletproof. Cooked filling can separate on you, and when it does the moisture runs out of the fruit and pools where you did not want it. And you are cooking the apples twice, once in the pot and once in the oven, which means you are always walking a line between filling and applesauce.
What we are testing against it
No pot at all.
Raw apple slices tossed in a dry mix of sugar, spices and cornstarch, piled into the shell, dotted with butter, covered in crumb topping and put straight in the oven. The oven cooks the apples.
Nothing about this is new. It is how apple pie got made in home kitchens long before anybody was making it by the hundred pounds. It is just new to us, because we have never run it at our volume.
Here is the part that got our attention. As it bakes, the butter and the juice and the starch meet the bottom of the crumb and set up into a layer with almost a sour cream consistency, sitting right between the fruit and the topping. It is not something we designed. It just happens, and it is very good.
The apples also hold their shape and their edges better, because they only get cooked once. They taste like apples instead of tasting like filling.
Why we actually care
We make about six hundred pounds of pie filling.
That is not a figure of speech and it is not a busy weekend, that is what the season looks like. We are short staffed right now, and standing over a kettle cooking six hundred pounds of apples in batches is a real number of hours.
To be clear, we are not going to cut corners on the pie because we are tired. If our standard wins, we make it work, the same as we have since the beginning. Nobody here has ever gotten out of the work by deciding the work was optional.
But if the older way is as good or better, then it is better on both counts, and only a fool would ignore that. That is the whole reason the samples are out. I want to know before I commit the season to one of them.
The apples
If I am making one pie, for one table, the blend is Granny Smith, Honeycrisp and Jonagold.
Granny Smith brings the acid and holds its shape long after everything else has given up. Honeycrisp brings sweetness and real juice. Jonagold sits in the middle and rounds it out. Almost nobody at home bothers to blend, and it is the easiest upgrade available to you.
Red Delicious does not belong in a pie. It goes soft and flat and gives you nothing. It does make very good applesauce, so it is not a bad apple, it is just the wrong tool.
And here is the part most bakeries will not put in writing
That blend is what I use for one pie. At six hundred pounds, it is a different conversation.
Our apples come in already peeled, sliced and frozen, from Dawn, a Michigan company. Nobody is hand peeling that volume in a bakery this size and still getting the bread out the door, and I would rather tell you that than let you picture a back room full of people with paring knives.
What we do not do, and will not do, is open a bucket.
There is a five gallon pail of pre made apple pie filling that shows up in just about every bakery case in this country. Apples, corn syrup, thickener, color and a shelf life measured in seasons. Scoop, fill, bake, sell. We have never used it and we are not going to.
Frozen sliced apples are apples. Bucket filling is a product.
And here is the honest part. That bucket would save us more labor than either method we are testing this week, by a mile. It is still not going in our pies.
Come taste it
Today, Friday and Saturday. Our standard against the older way.
Whichever one you pick is what goes into the Thanksgiving pies.
Chef Keegan and The Lakehouse Bakery Team
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