A Simple Pie
I made an apple pie for Thanksgiving, which in most years would be an entirely unremarkable act for me. I’ve been the designated Thanksgiving pie baker for over 30 years, and the year-round pie baker too. My Thanksgiving bake is reflective as I remember so many pies shared around so many tables, the gifts of the matriarchs through the generations.
Pie baking started with my mom teaching me the art of pie crust making when I was a child. If you can make a good crust, the rest is simple. For every crust a cup of flour, a teaspoon of salt and a third cup of Crisco. Use 2 table knives to cut in the shortening, holding one in each hand and drawing them away from each other. Add ice water a tablespoon at a time and use a fork to mix until it starts to clump together into a soft dough. Wrap it up, press it into a thick disc, and refrigerate. Roll it out with the wooden rolling pin with painted yellow handles, using a pastry cloth for the counter and a sleeve like a cut off sock for the rolling pin. Flour the cloth, flour the sleeve, roll from the center out to form a thin, but not too thin crust. Fold the rolled-out dough in half and slip the stainless-steel pie pan under it. For double crust, repeat.
The implements changed over the years. First a rolling pin scavenged from unclaimed items in student housing, then a heavy marble edition received as a wedding gift. Fancy, but it didn’t work well. Finally, I purchased a simple wooden model with tapered ends and no handles – really it’s just a piece of wood which pleases me. I no longer use the cloth or sleeve, just waxed paper on the counter and a good dusting of flour on the pin. The stainless pie tins are long gone, and I’ve settled on Pyrex deep dish pans as my preferred pie plate.
The recipe has evolved too. Increased first to fill the deeper pan, then I got fancier with an all-butter crust before settling on Dorie Greenspan’s recipe with butter and shortening which is mixed in a food processor. Becoming vegan necessitated a new round of experiments and I’ve settled on using Earth Balance as my fat. Flour, salt and ice water have been steady through the years.
My daughter has taken on the mantle of pie baker in her circle and lucky are they. She has expanded her repertoire into beautiful tarts, both Instagram worthy and delicious. It feels right to have passed this skill through the hands of the generations.
Baking has been a lifelong pleasure for me. I love the act of creating something delicious that will bring a moment of joy to the one who eats it. I’ve always been frustrated with recipe fails, whether from a bad recipe or user error. I’ve grown better at identifying good recipes through the years. I have some standards, but I still like to explore. Vegan baking has been a whole new journey. Lots of experiments, and LOTS of failures. It has been humbling to be a new baker all over again after about 45 years of experience.
A year ago, baking had become physically difficult. My body had become quite weakened by cancer that was not yet diagnosed. I baked through holidays by breaking the process into steps of short duration so that I could rest in between. I kept a chair in the kitchen to sit while I cooked whenever possible. It was a true labor of love, but not the act of a martyr. I baked to connect to the loved ones who came before, and the loved ones who are here now.
By February I no longer had the strength to bake. The cancer was discovered, chemotherapy began, and I only baked vicariously through reruns of the Great British Baking Show.
This Thanksgiving I baked a single apple pie. Flour, salt, fat, ice water. The tapered rolling pin. Pippin and Sierra Beauty apples this year. White and brown sugar, lemon and cornstarch, cinnamon and a little ginger. I stood and baked from start to finish. As I bent over to pull the finished pie out of the oven, I paused to remember that just a couple of months ago, I couldn’t stand for this long, I didn’t have the balance to bend over, my arms were too weak to trust myself lifting a hot pie out of the oven.
Gratitude washed over me: for modern medicine that shrinks tumors and gives back possibility; for my amazing body that keeps on going, that can start over from such weakness to strengthen again bit by bit; for this tradition and practice of baking for another holiday season; for my place in it all.