Apple Pie Recipe

Baked Apple Pie

I never had apple pie growing up.

My mother would sometimes bring home apple turnovers or a chocolate layer log cake. But apple pies were just not part of the Bronx bakery menu.

My favorite treat were the black and white cookies. And Italian bakeries would sell a “Chinese Cookie.” I don’t know what made it “Chinese,” but that’s what we called them.

I think the first time I ever tried apple pie was when I was an adult. I was visiting San Francisco and on Chestnut Street there was this pie place.

Over the many years since then, I would try to make a pie. Carefully cutting the cold butter into the cold flour with the cold pastry blade. It never seemed to work just right. The crust would turn out tough. Not the flaky texture that I craved.

I spent many hours going from one website to another, looking for the solution. Nothing seemed to work. The I saw some recipe from this chef Thomas Keller. It was about using a mixer to make the crust.

Like George Costanza learning to bake, it was the opposite of every approach I had ever followed before.

Anyway, here’s how I make apple pie.