First of all, I apologize for the delay in my pie posts. I want you all to know that while I am behind in my blogging I am not behind in my baking. Which means that I have a bunch of blogs to post in the next few days, so get ready for a pie blitz. A plitz?
A week and a half ago, it was my coworker’s birthday. Things have been insanely busy at work for all of us, and so I thought a birthday pie might be in order – plus, it was starting to get difficult for Paul and I to consume entire pies all by ourselves. Difficult, but not nearly impossible. Usually I only make fruit pies with local, seasonal fruit, and the Ontario fruit season hasn’t quite arrived yet. But I didn’t have enough time to make a more complex pie (like say, a lemon meringue pie) that wouldn’t need seasonal fruit. So I stopped at one of the fruit markets by my work on the way home, and saw peaches from the U.S. – first of the season. I basically never buy peaches that aren’t from Ontario in August, but I thought I’d give it a whirl – they felt fresh and smelled great.
When I got home and started peeling the peaches, I discovered that they seemed to be white peaches. I’ve never really bought white peaches before, so I was caught off guard. I wonder if white peaches ripen earlier in the year than the yellow-fleshed ones I’m used to? While I tossed the peach slices with lemon juice to keep them from oxidizing, by the time I was piling them into my pie shell they had browned quite a bit and it looked a lot more like I was making apple pie than peach. I didn’t have quite enough of the fresh peaches to fill my pie to my desired full-ness, so I supplemented with a few frozen peaches that I keep on hand for smoothies.
ready for the top crust.
Fresh peaches are not the only thing I was short on, I actually ran out of something much more crucial….flour. I’ve been making so many pies and we’d also been baking bread and burger buns and I got home with the intention of making a pie and had very little flour left. Short on time, I just supplemented with a lot more whole wheat flour than I would normally. I have to say – I found this crust to be pretty tough in the end. My coworkers still praised it, but I could really tell the difference – I think I will stick to just a bit of whole wheat flour in my pastry when I care about flakiness. The dough was just much denser and less light and flaky.
milk wash and sugar dusting.
While I was a tad disappointed with this pie due to the whole-wheat-factor and the too-early-peach-factor, it was still a welcome taste of late summer at a time of year when I am just itching for summer produce. I will definitely make more peach pies in August, believe me, and they will be well worth the wait.
Happy Birthday Helga!
a pie a week for a year 