Summer Berry Pie

The first thing that I thought off when we got home from the farmers market yesterday (and I realized that we bought more berries than we could realistically eat in the few days before some of the more delicate ones—ahem, raspberries—would start to go bad) was pie. One of the best things about summer is the ability to make wonderful, fresh fruit pies.  While a lot of you might associate the holidays, and especially Thanksgiving, with pie to me nothing says summer like homemade pie. Maybe that is because I like fruit pies more than pumpkin and pecan (the traditional fall pies) or maybe because I make blueberry pie every June as part of my Father’s Day gift to my dad. Regardless, my thoughts were consumed with pie as soon as we walked in the door.

 Look at how gorgeous these berries are!

I’ve made many pies before but never my own pie dough. Shocking, I know. Usually I opt for the Pillsbury dough that you find in the refrigerated section of the grocery store—the one that you just unroll and drop in a pie plate. Pie dough has always seemed a bit intimidating to me for some reason—maybe it’s the need for cutting the butter into the flour or the fact that I have limited counter space on which to roll out the dough. But using the premade stuff with those glorious berries seemed wrong somehow. Like I’d being doing them a great disservice by using it. So I decided to suck it up and try my hand at homemade crust.

Fortunately, my old friend Smitten Kitchen had a number of great step-by-step tutorials on making pie crust that made it all seem a bit more doable.  Since I followed her instructions to a “t” I won’t go into the step-by-step here. You can find her all-butter pie dough recipe here and her tips for rolling and crimping here. I will, however, offer a few suggestions/things I learned in my initial attempt at making pie crust from scratch:

1. Make sure you don’t leave your butter in too big of pieces. I thought I had achieved “tiny peas” as SK recommended but as I was rolling it out it looked like some pieces were a little big. As a result, when I pulled the pie out of the oven it seemed like some of the butter had melted/oozed out of the crust more than it probably should have. (Still tasted and looked good though—but the pie plate was a bit greasy feeling).
2. It is really important that you shape the dough into real discs before chilling it. It is much more difficult to get a true round during the rolling process if you are starting with an oblong.
3. SK’s rolling tips of “roll, lift, turn, repeat” really do make it so much easier to get a good, even circle (assuming you did number 2 correctly)
4. Definitely flour the heck out of your rolling surface and your rolling pin. Make sure to re-flour the rolling pin every so often.

 Don't those look like "tiny peas" to you??

Notice how not round these discs are.

In terms of the pie filling, I ended up using another one of SK’s recipes as a general guide for my Summer Berry Pie.  All in all the pie (crust and filling) turned out phenomenally. Given the juiciness of the berries I probably could have added a bit more cornstarch to the filling but even though it ran a bit, it still tasted incredibly good. Really. Words cannot accurately describe how good this pie is—all thanks to some exceptional fresh and local berries.

Summer Berry Pie
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients:
1 recipe of SK’s All Butter, Really Flaky Pie Dough
1 ½ cups fresh raspberries, rinsed
1 ½ cups fresh blackberries, rinsed
1 ½ cups fresh strawberries, rinsed and quartered
4 TBL cornstarch
2/3 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
Juice of half a lemon
Vanilla ice cream or whipped cream (optional)

1.Gently combine berries, cornstarch, sugar, salt, and lemon juice in a large bowl. Set aside.
2.Roll out half of chilled dough (use the larger one if you divided them unevenly)on a well-floured work surface so that you have a 12-13 inch round. Gently transfer rolled out dough into a 9 inch pie plate. Trim so you have a ½ inch overhang.
3.Using a slotted spoon, transfer berry mixture into the pie shell-try to leave as much of the liquid that has collected as possible (otherwise your crust will be soggy).
4.Roll out remaining chilled dough so that you have a 12 inch round. Gently drape over top of pie. Trim so that you have a 1 inch overhang. Fold the overhang (from both top and bottom crust) under to seal the crust. Crimp decoratively.
5.Cut slits in the top of the pie to allow steam to escape.
6.Bake on a cookie/baking sheet at 400 for 20-25 minutes (the baking sheet is key so you don’t end up with boiled over fruit juice/melted butter burning on the bottom of your oven). Make sure the oven rack is positioned in the center of the oven so you don’t brown the top too fast. Lower heat to 350 and continue to bake for another  25-30 minutes until fruit is bubbly and crust is golden brown. If the edges start to get too brown before the pie is done, you can cover them with aluminum foil to prevent burning. Cool on a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream if you’d like.