Awesome Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Still pretty warm from the oven!

Okay, so this pie has been out of the oven for about 18 hours now and it is 3/4 gone. Did I mention that we were asleep for like 8 of those hours? Right, so this is a really good pie!

The crust recipe is Dorie Greenspan’s Good for Almost Everything Pie Dough which is quite simply, the best pie dough I have ever made. Start with the pie dough. You can even make it a day ahead. I did this, rolling my bottom crust out the and letting it sit in the pie pan overnight in the refrigerator. The top crust just hung out in disc-form and then I rolled that one out before baking.

I kind of based the filling recipe on a number of recipes I found online and in cookbooks. It was a little from Column A + a little from Column B sort of thing. But first, onto the crust!

Dorrie Greenspan’s Good for Almost Everything Pie Dough
For a 9 inch Double Crust
3 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 sticks very cold unsalted butter, cut into tbsp size pieces
1/3 cup very cold vegetable shortening, cut into 4 pieces
About 1/2 cup ice water
My Addition: Zest of 1/2 an orange (you can zest the other half the orange for the filling)

Put the flour, sugar, orange zest and salt in a food processor fitted with a metal blade, pulse just to combine the ingredients. Drop in the butter and shortening and pulse only until the butter and shortening are cut into the flour.

You can of course, also use a pastry blender thingie or two forks or even your fingers. Don’t overdo the mixing – what you’re aiming for is to have some pieces the size of fat green peas and others the size of barley. Pulsing the machine on and off, gradually add about 6 tablespoons of the water – add a little water and pulse once, add some more water, pulse again and keep going that way. Then use a few long pulses to get the water into the flour.

If, after a dozen or so pulses, the dough doesn’t look evenly moistened or form soft curds, pulse in as much of the remaining water as necessary, or even a few drops more, to get a dough that will stick together when pinched. Big pieces of butter are fine.

Scrape the dough out of the bowl and onto a work surface. Honestly, I added about 10 tablespoons of water to mine. So, you may need more than 6 here.

Divide the dough in half. Gather each half into a ball, flatten each ball into a disk and wrap each half in plastic. Refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour before rolling.

Roll the first dough disc out on a floured surface and lay the dough down in your pie pan. Trim your edges with a 1/2 inch overhang. Continue with making the pie now or chill the bottom crust in the pie pan and the disc for the top crust in the fridge overnight.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie – Filling
2.5 cups rhubarb stalks, ends trimmed, cut into 1/2-inch or so slices
1.5 cups strawberries, tops trimmed, sliced in half
3/4 cup sugar
3 tbsp of quick cooking tapioca
1/4 tsp kosher salt
zest from 1/2 an orange
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Toss all the pie filling ingredients together in a large bowl.

Super ripe, tasty local strawberries

Let sit at room temperature for about 15 minutes or so.

Assembling the Pie
1 egg + 1 tbsp water, beaten
raw sugar

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Take your chilled dough out of the fridge. Let the disc you need to roll out soften up for about 15 minutes. Assemble the filling and add it to the pie shell.

Roll the top dough disc out and cover the top of the pie.

Crimp the edges together.

Here, I wrapped the whole pie up and stuck it in the fridge for about 15 minutes, as my top crust felt a little soft.

When you’re ready to bake: brush a little of the egg wash on the top of the pie and then make four slits in the top.

Sprinkle the top with some raw sugar and place the pie on a baking sheet and put in the middle of the oven. Give it 20 minutes at 400 degrees F, then turn down the oven to 375 degrees F and give it 40 more minutes. You want the pie to be in the oven for about 1 hour total.

Check after about 40 minutes and cover up the edges (either with a pie crust shield or aluminum foil) if the top edges are getting too dark. I did this to my pie about 45 minutes in.

When the pie is done, you should be able to see the filling bubbling up. Take the pie out and let it cool.

Then, enjoy!

Check out that awesomely flakey crust!