π Day!

So what if I kinda already have a post on Pies. It’s Pi Day! 3.14! March 14th, 2014. So technically this whole month should be Pi Month.

Pi Day is one of my favorite non-Holiday Holidays because A)It is Pie and B)It is π and C) Hello Baking Science. I just love the punny nature of everything, a pie is a circle, Circumference of a circle=2πr,  Area of a circle=πr².

Actually my favorite holidays are directly related to how much emphasis they put on the food. So Thanksgiving is HUGE. I also really love Epiphany in January because of the tradition of a bean hidden in a Pithivier and whomever gets the bean is king for a day. The first time I ever made this was for my brother Matthew’s french class, but it was a cheesecake then. Every Friday (maybe it was every month, a cake every week would be some feat for a teacher) the person who got the bean had to make the cake next week.

I went all out this week and made 3 pies of various sizes. I guess I went a little crazy  but I was making pies for the whole month this year :)

RhubarBerry Pie

and Lemon Meringue “Pies”

…and a really delicious Caramel Apple Pie

I’m not going to teach you how to make Pies because, well there is no real one way to make a pie. It’s really just a thickened filling in a crust… I used cornstarch to thicken the Rhubarberry and the Apple Pie, but Arrowroot also works.

I will give you the formula for a really nice flaky pie dough though. I made the crusts from the first roll, the top crusts and decorations were from the second roll of the dough and as you can see they were still might flakey. This makes a happy pie :)

Really Yummy Flaky Pie Dough

Flour                   1 #
Sugar                  1 oz
Salt                      2 tsp
Butter                10 oz
Water                5.5 oz
Lemon Juice    1 T
Zest from 1 Lemon

-Measure all the dry ingredients together
-Cut the fat into the dry ingredients so that it is pea size, then squish the pieces into the dry ingredients so that your butter is in “flakes” and coated by the flour
-Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour 1/3 of the liquid into the middle. Toss the surrounding flour onto the well of water until the flour absorbs all the liquid
-Toss everything to evenly distribute the wet parts around.
-Do this again till the liquid is gone.
-Gently gather all the dough into a ball, if you think it’s too dry, it probably just needs a bit more “kneading”. Adding more water makes your dough, well doughy, instead of flakey, and buttery.
-Chill the dough, for atleast 20 minutes, but ideally chill it overnight. A well rested pie dough makes a happy pie :)

Just think next year will be 3.14.15! OMG