How to make homemade pie crust and Dulce de Leche Apple Pie for Thanksgiving
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Pie crust from scratch takes time but yields a delicate, flaky, flavorful treat
Homemade pie crust can be a labor of love for the novice cook. In fact, I’m sure I’ve recommended using store-bought freezer aisle crusts. But if you have the time, patience and foresight to get this decadent pie crust recipe ready ahead of Thanksgiving dinner, your guests will absolutely love the result.
Pie crust’s secret weapon is its fat content, which helps impart both flavor and delicate flakiness. This recipe uses a mix of butter and lard, which hits a sweet spot between flavor and flakiness. Butter has a recognizable and desirable flavor for a pie crust, but can be difficult to work into dough because of its low melting point. Lard will create an irresistibly flaky crust and is firm and easy to work with, but it can carry a less-than-desirable pork flavor for a dessert. Balancing the two is a winning combination.
Chill both the fats overnight for this recipe. You want firm butter and lard so you can cut them into ½ inch cubes right before mixing the dough. Luckily, this recipe calls for using a food processor to cut the fat into the flour mixture, so you don’t have to worry about errant beads of fat that bubble up and ruin the consistency of your crust.
Once combined, mix with 3-4 tablespoons of ice water until it begins to clump together. Be conservative with any additional water you add to this recipe. Turn the dough out, divide in half and flatten both pieces into disks. For best results with this pie crust, let it firm in the refrigerator at least one hour before rolling it out to fit your pie dish.
Dulce de Leche Apple Pie is a certifiable crowd-pleaser
Step up your beloved apple pie with the addition of dulce de leche, which you can find near the condensed milk in the baking aisle at the grocery store. It comes together quickly and bakes for about one hour total, but make sure to leave plenty of time for the pie to cool. It needs several hours to properly set so you can easily remove slices without making a mess.
Some keys to a good apple pie that this recipe highlights:
Go easy on the spices! It’s apple pie, not cinnamon and nutmeg pie. Cinnamon and nutmeg are both potent flavors that can quickly overpower dishes, especially when freshly ground. Keeping the totals to ¼ teaspoon cinnamon and ⅛ teaspoon nutmeg is plenty to get the warming effect.
Introduce some acid to the filling. I’m used to squeezing fresh citrus into my fruit pies, but keeping with the apple trend, this uses apple cider vinegar. The acid helps prevent apple slices from oxidizing, which would turn the slices mushy, brown and flavorless.
Granny Smith apples are a pie’s best friend. A mushy pie is a bad pie, and Granny Smith apples keep their firmness throughout cooking. Something like a Red Delicious will yield a soft, watery pie.
My pro-tip for this recipe: Get a mix of apples at your farmers market or orchard. Keep it to at least half Granny Smith, and make up the remainder with apples of your choosing. Braeburn and Honeycrisp are great additions to pie, thanks to their sweet flavors.
