Adventures of a Bacon Berry Pie

Up until just a couple days ago, the only pies I had ever made had been slapped together in conditions that would make a health inspector's head spin and were baked in a cast iron Dutch oven (I specify cast iron so you don't get confused and think I'm referring to the kind of Dutch oven involving a blanket, butt gas and an unsuspecting victim.  Incidentally, I had no idea this kind of Dutch oven existed, innocent that I am, until I started raving about my latest masterpiece to a boy who started giggling and eventually informed me of this alternative version) during my days interpreting in an 18th century farm kitchen.  I was taught to make a pie by the resident Pie Queen whose recipe for making a pie ran thus:

1. Put some flour in a bowl.  Add some lard and some cold water and mush it all together with your fingers till you've got a dough.
2. Roll out your dough and line a pie plate.
3. Dump in your filling.  Eat whatever filling is leftover as a snack.
4. Roll out whatever dough didn't fit into the pie plate and cut it into strips.  Weave the strips over the top of the pie to make a lattice.
5. Bake the pie in the cast iron Dutch oven.  Keep an eye on your coals so it doesn't either take forever to cook or burn.  Voila!  Pie.

You'll notice the complete lack of measuring and science to this recipe.  Pie Queen preferred fruit pies, but I liked to experiment with meat pies, using the same crust recipe (I have leftover dough from the Bacon Berry pie, so I might whip up a pork pie in my home cast iron Dutch oven and share that with you in a future post).

I decided to make a pie because I had an abundance of berries in my house, between the blackberries and raspberries I had purchased at Target and the strawberries and blackberries I spent a small fortune on at the Farmers' Market, and letting berries go bad because you forget to eat them is a cardinal sin.  So before I would have to go to culinary confessional, I thought, "Why not make a pie?"

I suppose I could have done it the Pie Queen way and just done it willy nilly, but since I was using berries that were Not Cheap, I thought it best to follow some sort of instructions to ensure a Better Baking Experience.  So I measured flour, added salt, which was a new thing for my pie crusts, and slapped in some bacon grease.  I finally got to use my pastry cutter for its intended purpose (my roommate insists on using it as a pizza cutter), which was pretty exciting.

The pie making experience was a rather tame one, until the pie was in the oven and I was sitting on the couch and realised the extent of the bacon smell wafting at me from the kitchen.  And then I considered the potential ramifications of using 2/3 cup of bacon drippings in one's pie crust.  Berry Bacon Pie.

Now don't get me wrong, bacon is manna from heaven and goes great with pretty much everything.  But the pungent vapours emitting from my kitchen would have given even the most serious of carnivores pause: does bacon REALLY go with a triple berry pie?  I know Granny Smith apples go brilliantly with pork chops, so perhaps this wouldn't be such a terrible thing after all...

And it turns out, dear readers, that despite the strong odor of fried pig, the pie crust made of bacon grease doesn't actually possess the strong taste of fried pig.  There is a bit of an aftertaste, but it doesn't affect or diminish the deliciousness of the berry pie.  And really, where is the problem if you can have your pie and taste bacon, too?  Yeah, I don't see one either.

Without further ado, my friends of the world wide web, here is the Yankee Baker's first posted recipe:  Berry (Bacon) Pie!

THE CRUST

1. Put a little more than 2 cups of all-purpose flour into a mixing bowl.  Stir in a little salt.  Add about 2/3 cup of shortening, if you want to be classy about it.  Cut the shortening in to the flour until it forms pea sized crumbles.  Add COLD water, a tablespoonful at a time, mixing it in until you have a ball of dough.
2. On a floured surface, roll half the dough out so it will line a 9" pie plate.
3. Roll out the remaining dough into a rectangle and cut it into 8-10 long strips.  Set these aside (or save this step for after the filling is in the pie).

THE FILLING

1. You want about five cups of your favourite berry(ies).  I like tart berries, and the only berries I don't particularly care for are blueberries, so I went with strawberries, blackberries and raspberries.  You do what you want.
2. Add a heaping 1/2 of sugar (or more or less depending on how sweet your berries are and how sweet you wan them) and 1/3 cup flour (it seemed weird to me at first, but then it dawned on me: it thickens the juices!) and stir it all together.

THE MAGIC

1. Pour your berry filling into the crust in the pie pan.
2. Bring out those strips you cut.  Making a lattice top is not as difficult as some people might suggest; if you've ever made a situpon in Girl Scouts or woven a pot holder on one of those plastic looms with the neon coloured pantyhose loops, you can make a lattice pie top.  The trick to a lovely looking lattice is spacing.  Your strips should be about, oh I dunno, I'm crap at measurements, maybe 1/2" wide? and make sure the dough isn't rolled too thin before you cut them.  Then be sure you space neatly across the pie.  You don't want your strips too close together, nor do you want them leaving big gaps.  I like to do 5 strips on the warp and 4 on the weft.  (Weaving terms, don't let them scare you.  Just put 5 strips, evenly spaced, going one direction.  The other 4 will go perpendicular to these 4.  I will tell you how next.  Patience, grasshopper.)  Fold back the edges of the 1st, 3rd and 5th warp strips.  Lay the first weft strip down.  Fold the odd numbered warpers back down.  Now fold back the 2nd and 4th warpers.  Lay the second wefter.  Replace the even warpers.  You see it?  See the lattice?  Repeat these two steps till your lattice is complete.  Told you it wasn't that hard.
3. Brush a little milk over the top of the pie, maybe sprinkle it with a little sugar for some Edward Cullen worthy sparkle (let the record state that this is the extent of my knowledge about Twilight.  I happen to have a much better taste in reading material).  If your oven cooks hot, you may want to slap a little foil on the edges of your pie--I didn't, and it turned out a-okay.
4. Stick your creation into a preheated 375 degree oven and bake for about 50 minutes, or until the crust is browned and the berry goo is bubbly.  Remove, cool, cut, OM NOM NOM.

So there you have it, boys and girls.  Berry Pie.  Bacony tasting Berry Pie if you play your cards right.  And since I exhausted my supply of bacon fat on this one, I guess I'll be cooking up a lot of piggie to replenish.  This is me not complaining.