Pie Contest

What is it about pies?

Last week, I found myself being pressured to make some pies. First, Lou brought home several stalks of rhubarb with hopes I'd make him a rhubarb pie. They had been happily standing in a pitcher of water on our counter for a few days when Heather forwarded me a link from Daily Candy about a pie contest at Southern Exposure, near Mission Pie, on Mission and 25th Streets. She demanded that I enter the competition. Sheesh. Pushy Italians!

Thus, uh, encouraged, I decided to bake a couple of strawberry-rhubarb pies and enter the best one of them in the competition.

We had plans on Friday night, so I didn't get started making the pie dough until about 10:30 pm. I immediately ran into a couple of potential problems. First, I realized that I did not have enough chilled shortening in the fridge. Second, I realized that I did not have enough all-purpose flour to make the dough. I immediately threw the shortening in the fridge to attempt to chill it quickly, and I decided to use whole wheat pastry flour instead of all-purpose flour.

Last fall I had tried making pie dough with the whole wheat pastry flour, but the dough was a complete disaster. It was a crumbly mess. I know that I did not use enough water, but I also wondered if the whole wheat flour itself was part of the problem. Lou was convinced that it was, in fact, the whole wheat flour ruined the dough.

I have been using Julia Childs's recipe for perfect, flakey pie dough, and she says that you can use either all-purpose flour or pastry flour, though she doesn't weigh in on whether you can use whole wheat pastry flour. The few times I've looked for pastry flour at Bi-Rite or Rainbow, the only pastry flour I could find, was whole wheat pastry flour, so I figured that's just how it's made.

Last Friday night, off to a somewhat uncertain start, I began to assemble the dough. I mixed the flour and the salt, first added the cold butter, then the slightly chilled shortening, and I mixed them all together with a full cup of very cold, nearly frozen water. The dough was extremely moist and sticky, and about as well formed as the dough I made in March. I put the dough in the fridge to chill over night.

I woke up early on Saturday morning to roll out the dough and bake the pies before my swim practice at 11:30. When I took the dough out of the fridge, it was very hard, and even after I allowed it to warm up slightly, it was difficult to roll out. Slowly, gently, I rolled out four crusts. Two of them turned out very well, one of them was ok and the final one (actually the first one I rolled out) was a disaster. Slightly worried, I put them back in the fridge to rest.

Meanwhile, I headed out to Rainbow to buy some more strawberries and some quick cooking tapioca. I got home, cut the strawberries and rhubarb, sweated them in sugar, added the tapioca, some orange zest and salt and let the mixture rest for 15 minutes. Then I divided the mixture between the two pies, placed dollops of butter on the filling, covered them with the top crusts, brushed the tops with cream and dusted them with sugar before sliding them in the oven for about and hour and ten minutes.

I didn't cut deep enough vents in the better looking pie, but it came out looking fine. The filling in the other pie spilled out on the crust and over the side of the dish. Unfortunately, the crusts did not look very flakey.

After allowing the pies to cool, I texted Heather and invited her over to taste the pies before heading out to Southern Exposure to enter the contest. I opened a bottle of Sauternes and Lou used our new pressure device to "foam" some of the leftover vanilla ice cream in the freezer from the fourth of july. The pie tasted delicious. I was disappointed in the crust, however. Rather than turning out flakey, the crust was more crumbly. It tasted good--slightly like graham crackers--but it was not as flaky or as pretty as the crust I'd made in March.







After tasting, we headed over to Southern Exposure to deliver the pie. The scene was bustling and not at all what I expected. Quite honestly, I feared I'd be the only person to show up, but I was wrong. Eleven others beat us there, and there were about two dozen people milling around tasting pies, talking and enjoying the pie-making revelry.

I "registered," giving them my name and telling them what kind of pie I'd made. They explained the process: get photographed with your pie, cut a slice of pie for the judges, and go put your pie on the tasting table for others to try. I got my picture taken, and then went over to the judges. As I cut a slice, the piece kind of fell apart as I served it up (Heather said she saw me cringe). I thanked them and walked away. Lou immediately chastized me for not talking up my pie. He told me I should have "sold it." He refused to buy my argument that I couldn't sell a pie when I knew the crust was bad. He replied that George W. Bush didn't get elected President because he was the best candidate, but rather because he could sell it. I'm sure he was right; I could have sold it, but I didn't feel right about it knowing I can make really good crust.





I put the pie on the tasting table and admired some of the other pies. There were several interesting pies, including a pumpkin chocolate mole pie with sesame seeds and a beautiful blueberry pie with an elaborate lattace top. There was also a coconut cream pie with caramel, a la Tartine. It was a fun, festive atmosphere, but we left early before they announced the winners because I had a hair cut.

I didn't win, but I had fun, and we had two pies. I'm still not quite sure what went wrong with the crust. In the meantime, I think I'll stick with all-purpose flour, or I might try mixing all-purpose and whole wheat pastry flour half and half.