Humble pie

Carl Sagan once said, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." Turns out, I'm not a baking god.

All’s well that ends well.

That’s what they say, anyway. And by that standard, Operation Turkey / Tofurky To-Go was a success. Christina and I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for five households and delivered the meals the day before Thanksgiving.

We even saw local celebrity Angelyne driving her trademark pink Corvette on the 101.

But that’s not where the story begins. The story begins with a question: what does Thanksgiving mean to me?

The answer could fill a book. The trouble is, 2020 is a throw-the-book-out-the-window kind of year. Since our usual Thanksgiving open house wasn’t an option, we’d have to reinvent the holiday, and to reinvent the holiday, we’d have to get down to brass tacks, to core principles, to the heart of the matter.

For me, Thanksgiving is cooking for people I love. Watching loved ones eat my cooking is optional.

We gathered recipes, created a menu, and made a shopping list. Then one night, while watching The Great British Baking Show, I said something crazy.

“I’m going to make pie from scratch.”

“From scratch?”

“They can do it,” I said, pointing at the bakers on the television, “how hard can it be?”

“But you don’t know how to bake,” Christina said.

It’s true. I am not a baker. But I’ve eaten plenty of pies. Plus, my sister, Allison, makes fantastic pies from scratch. And our Bubbie was a legendary baker. It’s probably all in the genes. Wind in my sails. I can do this.

“I’ve seen The Great British Baking Show,” I tell Christina. “I may not be a star baker, or get the coveted Paul Hollywood handshake, but I know my way around the kitchen well enough to bake a simple pie.”

“Baking isn’t like cooking,” Christina says. “You can’t just do a jazz odyssey if you don’t like the way the dish is going. You need to follow a really precise plan.”

“Got it. There are no rewrites in baking. You nail the outline, execute the draft, and bask in the glory of pie.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ve got it,” I insist.

“I think you should call Allison,” Christina says.

“You want to bake a pie from scratch for the first time?” Allison asks.

“Yeah, what could go wrong?”

“It’s 2020, Michael, so…”

“This is just a pie,” I say.

Allison gives me a “super simple” pie dough recipe.

“What about filling?” I ask. “I’m thinking pumpkin. Or, maybe you could send me your chocolate bourbon pecan pie recipe?”

“That’s next-level stuff,” Allison cautions. “Since it’s your very first pie, I’d go basic. Stick to apple. Maybe pecan.”

Got it. Learn to crawl before you run.

I add the pie ingredients to our online shopping list and proceed to purchase the wrong kind of flour. Was that a sign of things to come? You bet. Did I recognize the harbinger? Nope.

I set aside Monday afternoon to bake the pies. I place my ingredients on the counter.

Flour.

Sugar.

Salt.

Butter.

Distilled white vinegar.

Ice water.

Baking, I remind myself, is all about executing a plan. I have a plan. And I’ve got the mise en place to make it happen. But then the flour catches my eye.

“Hey honey,” I call out from the kitchen, “are you supposed to use whole wheat flour?”

“I don’t know,” Christina calls back from the office. “What does the internet say?”

The internet says, don’t. Pie dough, the internet’s bakers insist, should be made with all-purpose flour.

“Damn it!”

“What?” Christina asks.

“I need regular flour.”

“Or, you could just use the pre-made pie crusts I bought.”

Pre-made pie crusts. I don’t like the sound of that. I didn’t buy a pre-brined turkey. I didn’t ask some faceless corporation to mash my potatoes. I’m sure as hell not going to rely on pre-made pie crust. What would Paul Hollywood say?

Thirty minutes later, I return from the store with all-purpose flour. Now, I’m ready to bake.

I place the flour, sugar, and salt into a large bowl, and whisk them together. Easy as pie!

Now, for the butter. Here’s what the recipe says:

Using your hands, smash the butter between your palms and fingertips into the flour, creating long, thin, flaky bits.

Smashing the butter is easy. And fun. As I work, the butter becomes one with the dry ingredients. The process feels very Zen. I even have an epiphany about pie: the crust is really just a vehicle for butter, which must be why people love pie so much.

Then a question pops my buttery Zen bubble. When will this concoction yield the “flaky bits” I was promised?

I keep working. Then glance at the recipe.

When most of [the butter] is incorporated and there are no large chunks remaining, dump the flour mixture onto a work surface.

Hmmm. This could be a problem. There are no large chunks of butter remaining, but there are no “flaky bits” in sight. Also, this doesn’t feel like dough. I feels like… butter. I should call Allison.

“Shit!”

“Everything OK, honey?” Christina asks.

In my rush to call Allison, I forgot to wash my hands. Turns out pie dough is incompatible with my phone’s touchscreen. But I have bigger problems. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remember that I need to work quickly, otherwise the worked-over butter will melt, and bad stuff will happen. I don’t know this from experience, of course, but I’ve seen enough shit go down on The Great British Baking Show to know that I’ve entered make-or-break territory.

“Fuck!”

“Honey, what’s going on? Is everything OK?”

“Nothing!”

“It doesn’t sound like nothing,” Christina says.

“There’s going to be a lot of cursing from here on out!”

I clean my hands, curse, then clean my phone.

“I don’t see the flaky bits,” I tell Allison.

“It’s OK,” she says. “Pie dough is fussy. It depends on humidity and air temp, and a lot of things you can’t control.”

“I’m screwed!”

“Did you watch videos of people making pie?” Allison asks. “It really helps to see it before you do it.”

“I watch The Great British Baking Show,” I say. “You know this.”

“Right, but that’s a TV show, and those bakers have a lot of experience.”

“They’re supposed to be amateurs. I’m an amateur. I just went for it.”

“Oh.”

“Am I screwed?”

“No, no. You’re not… screwed.”

I know she’s lying. I just know it.

“I gotta go!”

I hang up the phone, wash my hands again (hygiene, people!), and return to my dough. Things go from bad to worse when I get it onto my work surface. Technically, I’m supposed to be kneading the dough, but actually it feels a lot more like I’m buttering the countertop.

I curse. I add flour. I curse some more. I add more fucking flour.

“How’s it going?” Christina asks from the office.

“I’m a sinking ship! I’m fucking doomed! There will be no dessert this year. I hate 2020! Fuck 2020! Fuck pie, too!”

“Or, we can just buy pie.”

“Never! I can’t accept fucking defeat!”

“But you’re cursing a lot, and you sound really stressed.”

“I am really stressed! It’s an epic fucking disaster up in here!”

I check the recipe. It no longer looks simple. It looks like a damn trap.

When you’ve got a shaggy mass of dough (it will not be smooth and it certainly will not be shiny), knead it one or two more times, then divide in half. Pat each half into a flat disc, about 1 inch thick. Wrap each disc individually and refrigerate at least 2 hours.

I wouldn’t call my dough a “shaggy mass,” but after adding flour and f-bombs, I think it’s time refrigerate these “flat discs.”

I struggle to get the discs off the counter without them falling apart. I curse. I question everything. Not just my decision to make pie from scratch, or to reinvent Thanksgiving, but the whole enchilada. I look up at the ceiling and curse my pie-loving existence.

I place the pie dough in the fridge. While the dough chills, I make the filling. This part really is simple, but as I peel, core, and slice the apples, my thoughts return to the dough. Am I’m wasting good filling on bad dough?

“This is hopeless,” I tell Christina.

“Let’s just wait and see what happens.”

We wait and see.

Two hours later, we take the dough out of the fridge. Sensing that I’m on the verge of a breakdown, Christina makes an executive decision.

“I’ll help you.”

Christina begins to work with the dough.

“Hmm… this doesn’t feel right.”

“See, we’re screwed. We should just give up. Maybe we should buy pie. Maybe we should cancel Thanksgiving.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Christina struggles to form the dough in the pan.

“I think it needs more flour.”

“I added a shit-ton of flour already,” I say. “It’s got way more flour than the recipe called for. Also, can we add flour at this juncture?”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “You said baking was about following an exact plan.”

“Yeah, well sometimes you just have to wing it.”

“Don’t say it.”

“Jazz odyssey,” Christina says.

“In front of a festival crowd?”

Turns out, the jazz odyssey was the right move. Christina added flour, then more flour. Then she called for back-up.

“I think we need to cross the streams,” she said.

I thought we were baking with Spinal Tap references, but the thing about a jazz odyssey is that it can go anywhere, even as far as a parallel dimension run by a cat named Gozer.

“We’re going to patch your dough with the pre-made dough.”

“Like Frankenstein? It’s a dough monster. A Franken-dough.”

“Exactly.”

This doesn’t sound good to me, but Christina has that mad scientist look in her eyes. And it’s not like we have any other options.

“I don’t like it,” I say. “Is this going to work?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Christina gets to work fusing the homemade dough with the pre-made stuff. Soon enough she has something that looks like a pie shell. We add the apple filling.

“You want to do a Pepsi challenge?” Christina asks.

“My dough against Franken-dough?”

“Yeah.”

I really don’t need to take the Pepsi challenge to see that I’ve failed. But I am curious to see how my dough will come out.

“Let’s do it.”

Here’s my pie. Note that there is no top because there was no way to flatten out enough dough to cover the pie. The crust was… well, let’s just say it feel apart at the sight of a fork. It tasted good. With that much butter, there’s no way it’d taste bad. But without that cohesive thing we call pie, it was just a mess of fat and sugar.

Here’s the Franken-pie. That monster held together, and because it was reinforced with my failed dough, it was extra buttery. #Yum.

Guess which one we ate. Hint: Christina’s pie is pictured with a fork. The Paul Hollywood handshake goes to Christina.

As for me…