APPLE PIE

BY THE TIME THE HOLIDAYS ROLL AROUND, many boutique apples, like Northern Spy and Winesap, are gone, and only the supermarket standards remain. We wanted to make an apple pie with varieties available year-round everywhere. After testing dozens of possibilities, we determined a combination of Granny Smith and McIntosh apples is best.

The Granny Smiths hold up well during cooking and the McIntosh add flavor and balance the sourness of the Grannies. The mushy texture of the McIntosh apples is a problem when used on their own but provides a nice base for the harder Grannies and soaks up some of the juice in our pie; it also makes the use of flour or other flavor-dulling thickeners unnecessary.

When shopping for Granny Smith apples, we found it important to avoid truly acerbic fruit. Many Granny Smiths are picked too early, when they are bright green, a color that consumers and store managers prefer. The best Grannies are light green, indicating a riper, more mature apple. In general, more muted colors indicate riper specimens for other apple varieties as well.

With the apple component of the filling settled, we moved on to other possible ingredients. We found that butter competes with the flavor of the apples and is not needed. Lemon juice, however, is absolutely crucial to a good pie because it balances the sugar. In order to give the apples the upper hand, use only small amounts of spices.

In many apple pie recipes, there is a large gap between the top crust and filling, which cooks down substantially during baking. With our crust recipe, however, this is not an issue. There is sufficient shortening cut into the flour that the crust sinks down onto the apples as they cook. This high ratio of shortening produces a very flaky crust, one that is not easily cut into perfect slices. In addition, there is still a fair amount of juice, which we find essential for good flavor, and the filling may spread slightly once cut into individual slices.