My First Pie Tasted a Little Like Peach

I woke up Saturday morning with the urge to go to the farmers market, purchase some fresh peaches, and make a peach pie. There was only one problem: I've never made a pie in my life. Sure, I've made cheese cake with a store bought crust and a 3-step recipe I found on the back of the cream cheese, but does that really count as a pie, or baking from scratch? No, not really, no. From basic knowledge of watching the Food Network and various cooking shows, all I really knew was I definitely needed flour for this task. Just like all my other cooking spurts, I headed to the first place I always go when I need help: Google. I looked up a Peach Pie recipe and found one instantly! Man, you gotta love that Google.

Compliments to TexasCooking.com, this was the first recipe I came across and decided it was the one to try. Turns out, it was super simple, and produced an amazing pie! Now, I only had an 8'' pie pan instead of a 9'' or 10'', but it still worked perfectly.

This is basically the same recipe and instructions from the website, but I altered it a bit to sound like me and to incorporate the steps that I added.
The original recipe can be found here!
[Psst! If the link fails, just copy and paste this url into the url box:
http://www.texascooking.com/recipes/freshpeachpie.htm]


Fresh Peach Pie

Filling 
3/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
4 ripe fresh peaches, peeled and sliced (about 5 cups)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg (or ground mace, for an old-fashioned flavor)

Crust
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup Crisco or other good shortening
1/2 cup cold water
2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces
1 Egg
2 Tablespoons White Sugar

Preheat oven to 425°F.

Instructions
Remove the skin of the peaches with either a vegetable peeler, or boiling water: dump the peaches in boiling water for 30-60 seconds, remove them and place them in ice water, then remove the skin. [Note: I used a peeler... perhaps I should have tried the boiling method first...]

Cut the peaches in half and take the seeds out. Cut them into slices or as best you can.

To make the filling, mix white sugar, brown sugar and 1/4 cup flour in a large bowl. Add the peaches, lemon juice, cinnamon and nutmeg or mace and toss well. Set aside. [Note: I only used cinnamon, no mace or nutmeg.]

To prepare the dough, mix 2 cups of flour and salt in large mixing bowl. Measure shortening and drop on top of flour mixture. Cut flour into shortening with fork or pastry blender until mixture becomes small bits of shortening coated with flour. Add water to the mix. Stir with a fork to make the dough.

Generously flour work surface and hands. Scoop dough out of bowl, plop it onto work surface and pat into a rough ball. Divide into 2 equal portions. Roll out 1 portion into circle about 12 inches in diameter, lifting dough and sprinkling additional flour onto work surface as needed so that dough doesn't stick.

To transfer to 9- or 10-inch pie pan, roll dough loosely around rolling pin and unroll, starting at far side of pie pan, so that dough drops into pan. Avoid stretching dough. Let about 1-1/2 inches of dough hang over outer edge of pan. Dump the fruit filling into the pan. Scatter bits of butter over fruit. [Note: I used an 8" pie pan and it worked fine.]

Roll out the second lump of dough. Cut into strips about an inch thick. Lay and weave them into a cross pattern on top of the pie. Roll up the excess dough at the edge of the pan into a crust around the entire pan.

I have just now realized... I messed up the weaving process... 

Take your egg and make an egg wash. Brush it on top of the dough. Sprinkle the 2 tablespoons of white sugar on top of the pie.

Bake at 425°F for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350°F, and bake until juices bubble around edges on top of pie and crust is lightly browned, about 40 minutes more.

This was the final product!

In conclusion, I must say, I'm pretty proud of my first pie. It may not look too pretty just yet, but with some more practice, I'll get it down. Hey, which would you prefer though: An ugly pie that tastes like heaven? Or a pretty pie that tastes like a cow made it? I think I've made my point.