Peach Pie

What is summer without a peach pie?  This year our tree didn’t produce enough peaches. My husband bought these beauties at Costco.  Unfortunately, they weren’t ripe and too hard.  I needed to make the pie the next day so I threw them into a paper bag, added a banana, and viola! In just one overnight, they were ripe-not too much so-but perfect for pie making!

I have made many peach pies before, but because they are SO juicy, the bottom crust often suffers from the wet and soggy syndrome. Since this pie was to be dessert at a friend’s house, I was determined to resolve that.

I googled a recipe from Serious Eats, as I have had good luck with them in the past.

Using my very easy pie crust recipe (see recipe here), I made the dough using my food processor. While the dough was refrigerating, I prepared the peaches for peeling. I typically don’t peel my peaches so this was a first for me. Note: Peeling is optional.

Drop the fresh peaches into a large pot of boiling water.  Do not crowd the peaches.  Boil for 30-40 seconds.

Remove the peaches and immediately place in an ice bath. Cool for 1 minute.

The skins will easily separate from the fruit.

The recipe calls for each peach to be cut into 8 pieces, but these were exceptionally large peaches so I cut them into chunks.

Add the cornstarch, sugar and lime zest and mix.  I’ve not used lime zest before so I was interested to see how it would impact the flavor.

Fill bottom crust with peach filling.

I made an extra effort to keep the pie crust chilled as much as possible.  I cut the top crust into strips for a basket weave pattern.

Apply the strips one at a time.

Alternate lifting up and laying down each strip until you have successfully completed a basket weave pattern for the top crust.

Trim off the excess pie crust edges.

Using a fork, crimp the outer edge of the pie to seal in the filling.

Brush the crust with a beaten egg and salt.

Sprinkle with sugar and then chill the entire pie for at least 20 minutes.  I did 40 minutes.

Place in the preheated 425 degree oven for 15 minutes. Then drop the temperature to 375 degrees and bake for 30-40 minutes until golden brown and the filling is bubbling over.

I added a pie crust shield to prevent the edges from browning too quickly. I wasn’t as wide as the pie dish but I believed it helped.

Here it is! The juices were bubbling and dripping out of the pie. Note to self: while pie is baking, put a pan beneath it or a piece of foil as the sweet drippings were stuck all over the bottom of my oven.

We brought the pie with some homemade vanilla ice cream to friend’s house so I do not have any pictures of a cut piece.

However, it was DELICIOUS!  Lots of peach pie juice, but the crust was NOT wet or soggy.  I believe keeping the crust chilled and then chilling the pie before baking was the key. Also, there wasn’t any noticeable lime zest flavoring~~I will assume it just enhanced the peaches.

Couple of points:

1. I used a 9″ deep dish pie dish.  The recipe calls for a 9″ pie pan.
2. I didn’t weigh my peaches so it’s highly possible I had over 4 lbs.
3. The recipe instructs you to turn the pie dish while baking.  I did do this and the pie appeared to brown evenly.
4. You can do any top crust you would like.
5. Usually I add pieces of butter to a peach pie but didn’t do so this time.  I didn’t impact the flavor at all.
6. The pie had quite a bit of juice.  However, the bottom crust was not soggy. Yippee!
7. The homemade ice cream was done in a Cuisinart Ice Cream maker.  It took 20 minutes to make and a few hours to freeze.  Was really worth it.

Classic Peach Pie Recipe from Serious Eats

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