If you remember in the peach crisp post, I mentioned how I loved to decide what I'm making by the fresh ingredients I buy at the store. Well....this was one of those situations. I new I wanted to make a pie and I had the freshest sweetest blueberries......so the choice was easy!!
For the crust:
12 oz Ap flour
5 oz very cold unsalted butter cut into very small pieces no bigger than ¼ inch- making them very small is SUPER important.
3 oz very cold lard crumbled into tiny pieces
½ teaspoon fine grain sea salt
7 tablespoons ice water
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
Dissolve sea salt in the ice-water and add the apple cider vinegar to the mix. Scatter butter and lard pieces evenly across the flour and begin gently working the butter and the flour together with your fingertips. This should be a gentle and easy process.
Once most of the butter is broken down into pieces, you can start working in a short rocking motion with the pastry cutter around the bowl- for maybe 10 or so strokes
The final product will look like coarse corn meal.
Add five tablespoons of the liquid being very careful not to get any chunks of ice in the dough. Also, make sure it is distributed very equally over the surface of the dough. Begin gently working the water into the dough with your hands. You should be able to tell quickly if there is enough liquid for the dough to stick together. If not, add more, and work that in. If the 8 tablespoons of ice-water/vinegar is not enough, add more cold water to the ice I prefer to have a slightly moist dough to a dry one. Your dough will be kind of a shaggy mess- not pretty and completely smooth. It should just stick together.
Work your dough into a rough ball and turn out onto a well-floured rolling surface. Cut into two equal halves and form each into a ball. Form each ball into a 5 inch disc. Wrap each disc tightly in plastic and place in the refrigerator for at least one hour (two hours is even better) to rest. This allows the gluten to relax so that you’ll have a tender crust. You can leave the dough up to five days, but if you’re leaving it overnight or longer, place the plastic-wrapped discs inside of a ziptop bag to prevent moisture loss.
Pull dough from frig and place on a well floured surface. Roll out the size or your pie dish. Bake according to your pie directions.
Blueberry Pie:
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 T lemon juice
5 cups fresh blueberries
*Now if you want to do a double crusted pie you can....I didnt I just put the crust on the top cuz that's how I roll....
Place one crust in the bottom of the pie dish (If you doing that) In a large bowl mix blueberries with lemon juice, flour and sugar. Pour blueberries into pie dish. Top with pie crust and shape and make it pretty. Cut an x in the center of the top pie crust. If you like to brush it with milk and sprinkle with sugar you can.
To prevent overbrowning cover edge of the pie with foil. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 25 minutes. Remove foil. Bake for 20-25 more minutes or until top is golden. Cool on a wire rack. Makes 8 servings.
