Pie

 

Hello everyone, Central Kitchen here! Up to this point we have been covering simple recipes with the hardest one being our lava cake recipe. This recipe is more advanced than the others, but the work and effort to create it will be all worth it! With summer approaching and various fruits and veggies starting to bloom and grow, I want to promote the fruits and food that can be grown here in the Central Valley. While they may not be ready to harvest (yet), I wanted to take the time to prepare a sweet recipe fit for summer: Blueberry Pie

    Pie Crust

• 1 1/4 Cups Flour
• 10 Tablespoons Frozen Butter
• Pinch of Salt
• 3 Tablespoons Ice Cold Water

Before we get started, I want to say that for this recipe a food processor is highly recommended. While you can shred frozen butter on a cheese grater and mix with a fork and your hands, it takes quite some time to mix together. 

This makes one pie crust or one pie lattice. For both the crust and lattice in the image, make this recipe twice!

1. Cut your butter into small cubes, about 1 Tablespoon in size, before freezing. Frozen butter is a hassle to cut
2. In your food processor, add in your flour and salt and pulse blend until combined
3. One tablespoon at a time, add in your frozen butter and pulse until the butter incorporates into the flour. Keep this dough COLD, pie needs to remain as cold as possible for as long as possible.
4. Once fully combined, add in your water and pulse one tablespoon at a time. Don't add too much, pie dough hydrates after being kneaded even if it looks dry!
   
5. Remove dough from food processor and place onto a cleaned surface and press together into a ball. It'll look and feel dry, but if it is able to come together after being pressed like moist sand, it has enough water to hydrate!
6. Flatten down into a disk, wrap in plastic, and chill in a fridge for at least 3 hours.

Blueberry Pie

• 4 Cups Blueberry
• Zest of a Lemon
• Juice of a Lemon
• 1/2 Cup Sugar
• 1/4 Cup Corn Starch
• 1/4 Teaspoon Cinnamon
• 2 Pie Dough
• 1 Tablespoon Butter
• 1 Egg
• 1 Tablespoon Water or Milk

1. Wash and dry fresh blueberries and mix together in a bowl with zest, juice, sugar, corn starch, and cinnamon (You can zest a lemon with a cheese grater as well)
   
   
   
2. Flour a flat surface and rolling pin generously and roll out dough into a circle while flipping sides until it is slightly larger than your pie pan. If it's too hard to roll, leave out for 15 minutes. If it cracks too much when rolling, clump dough back into a sphere and try again (Flour each time you flip the dough)
   
   
   
3. Place your dough into the pie pan by wrapping it around your rolling pin and cut off the excess. Fill it with the blueberry filling along with small cubes of butter on top (The 1 Tablespoon of butter)
4. Roll out your second disk of dough and cut into wide, vertical slices. It's difficult to explain the lattice crust process in words, so check out this nifty guide on how to do it!
   
   
   
5. Mix the egg and water/milk in a separate bowl and lightly brush the crust and lattice of the crust with it, you don't have to use the entire egg wash, only enough to lightly cover the crust!
6. Sprinkle sugar over the crust, place on a large tray, and bake for 20 minutes at 425 F.
7. Lower temperature to 375 F and cook for 40 to 50 more minutes. How do you know when it's done? Check the bubbles in the filling! They should be large and slow, almost like lava!
8. Take out of the oven and cool for 3 hours and enjoy (with ice cream)!