Week 13 – It’s all Peachy!

Peach Pie

So summer is finally on is way here in south Wales, with warm weather, long nights and actual sun!  So as tempting as it was to spend all my time outside, I returned to the kitchen to complete this week’s bake.  I chose this initially due to, as is often the case with me baking with fruit, I bought peaches from the reduced section in the supermarket.  There are two peach recipes in the book, Peach Cobbler and Peach Pie.  I decided to make the pie as I’ve already made a cobbler, and I need to make pastry more often; it, like bread, scares me.  However, after deciding I was going to make a Peach Pie, I read the ingredients,  weighed my punnet of fresh peaches, and realised I was going to need a lot of fresh peaches to make up the 700 grams required for the filling, so I went out and bought 2 tins of sliced peaches.  And at 32 pence each, it was probably less than I paid for the fresh peaches!

 

The Bake

For this recipe, I stuck to all the ingredients as listed, except I used margarine/vegetable spread instead of butter in the pastry.  Which leads me to the first step, making the sweet pastry.  First the flour and butter is combined to make a crumb consistency, before adding caster sugar and eggs.  Even after adding the eggs, the mixture seemed really dry, and wasn’t combining to make dough, so I added some water a dessert spoon at a time, until I was happy with the dough.  I think I may have added a little too much water though, as when I put it in cling film to rest in the fridge, it seemed a bit wet.  Handy tip, the recipe says to tip the dough onto a floured surface, before making a big dough ball, then wrapping it in cling film.  I pre- rolled out some cling film onto the worktop, then tipped the dough directly onto it, thus saving the worktop getting covered in flour before you need to roll out the pastry.

 

After the dough has rested in the fridge, you need to roll out the pastry.  This is where I encountered some problems, so it was handy my mother was around, to basically show me the correct pastry prepping ways.  The ball of dough was way too big to roll in one, so I split it in half, before rolling it until it was thin enough to receive my mother’s approval.  After putting the pastry in the pie dish, I sliced off the edges, keeping the offcuts for the top, then gave the whole case an egg wash (i.e. brush it with egg), and put it in the fridge, while turning to the filling.

 

The filling is actually really simple – drain the peaches, then mix them in the bowl along with cornflour, caster sugar, vanilla extract, cinnamon and nutmeg.  I’m not really sure why cornflour is needed, but it’s so rare that I need to use my cornflour, I’m grateful to see it in a recipe.  As I’d only used half the pastry, I wondered if I would only need half the filling, but the whole 700g of peaches fit into my Le Creuset pie dish. 

 

After filling the pie dish with the, well, filling, gather the offcuts from the pie base, and re-roll to make the crust.  Ease it over the top of the pie, brush with egg wash, sprinkle with caster sugar and put into the fridge (again) for a bit, before putting into the oven for an hour.  Oh, after cutting 3 slits into the pie.  This is where it’s sometimes nice to add some decoration with extra pastry, however my attempt at making a peach out of pastry looked silly, so I went for a simple cross on top.

 

One hour later, a perfectly cooked peach pie emerged from the oven.  I think it may have had more of an all-over golden look if I’d put more egg wash on the top of the pie.  However this didn’t affect the taste at all, the pastry was soft and moist, but not soggy, and the peaches were sweet with the spice a subtle addition.  It isn’t a showstopping bake, however it did taste like a well-cooked, homely fruit pie.  My main recommendation is to lessen the quantities of the pastry by around a third.  I could’ve used half as much, but I used a smaller pie dish, around 6 inches rather than the 9 inch pie dish the recipe says to use.  I had so much pastry leftover I made a whole other pie!  Well, an egg custard tart.  And there was still enough left over to make 12 small tarts, with egg custard and lemon curd filling. 

 

Everything did turn out well and tasted good, however with all the extra baking, and the resting of the dough and the pie, making the pie was quite time-consuming.  Luckily it was a leisurely Sunday afternoon!  Until next time, happy baking!