Recipes and tips home cooks need to make every kind of pie, old fashioned classics, new creations, traditional favorites, refrigerator, and freezer pies. Novices and experienced pie bakers alike will find reassuring advice and time-tested tips on equipment, ingredients, judging baking times, rolling and shaping dough, and everything else needed to get through to the last scrumptious bite of home-made pie.
We all know that the season for truly good, ripe peaches is short—far shorter than the amount of time they occupy supermarket produce aisles during the summer months. When the quality of peaches is not what it should be, I like to use frozen fruit instead. Frozen peaches are a relative bargain, compared to fresh or canned, and the quality is very good. I’ll repeat here what I say elsewhere: the quality of frozen produce in this country is quite often superior to that of fresh, in large part because there is very little time between harvesting and processing. That Said, you can make an excellent peach pie with frozen fruit. I like to add a good amount of lemon juice and zest, both of which lend an aura of freshness, and a little nutmeg and vanilla to replace those subtle flavor notes that get lost in the processing.
If you haven’t already, prepare the pastry and refrigerate until firm enough to roll, about 1 hour.
On a sheet of lightly floured waxed paper, roll the pastry into a 13-inch circle with a floured rolling pin. Invert the pastry over a 9 1/2-inch deep-dish pie pan, center, and peel off the paper. Gently tuck the pastry into the pan, without stretching it, and sculpt the overhang into an upstanding ridge. Place in the freezer for 15 minutes.
Combine the peaches, lemon juice, lemon zest, and 1/3 cup of the sugar in a large bowl and toss well to mix. Set aside for 10 minutes to juice. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
In a small bowl, mix the cornstarch with the remaining 3 tablespoons sugar. Sprinkle this mixture over the fruit and mix well. Stir in the vanilla and nutmeg. Turn the filling into the chilled pie shell and smooth the filling with your hands to even it out. Place the pie on the center oven rack and bake for 35 minutes.
Meanwhile, make the topping. Combine the flour, sugar, salt, almonds, and coconut in a food processor and pulse several times to mix. Scatter the butter over the top and pulse until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Add the milk and process again until the crumbs are gravelly. Transfer to a large bowl and rub gently between your fingers to make the crumbs uniform in texture. Refrigerate until ready to use.
Remove the pie from the oven and reduce the temperature to 375 degrees F Carefully dump the crumbs in the center of the pie and spread them evenly with your hands. Press on the crumbs gently to compact them. Return the pie to the oven, placing it so that the part that faced the back of the oven now faces forward. Just in case, slide a large aluminum foil-lined baking sheet onto the rack below to catch any spills. Bake until the juices bubble thickly around the edge, about 30 minutes.
Transfer the pie to a wire rack and let cool for at least 1 hour before serving.
Recipe for Success The juiciest pies, such as this one, seem to need a very thick layer of crumb topping, the way we do it here. If you use too little topping, it tends to just soak into the juice, and you end up with a sludge-topped pie rather than a crumb- topped pie. Don’t worry if you think there’s too much topping. Use all of it, and the pie will be great.
