Recipe for Old-Fashioned Apple Pie (2024)

FAQs

How do you bake an apple pie so the bottom crust is not soggy? ›

Brush the Bottom with Corn Syrup or Egg White

Coating the inside surface of the bottom crust will create a barrier to prevent sogginess.

The dominant taste of apple pie is sweet. But adding a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice to your pie can help balance out the flavor a bit and add tartness. If you don't have lemon juice handy, you can substitute an equal amount of commercial balsamic vinegar or a 50/50 mixture of apple cider vinegar and water.

Ingredients like flour, cornstarch, and tapioca help thicken pie fillings and keep them from being a watery mess. Apples don't release as much liquid as berries and therefore need less thickener. Flour and cornstarch both work well in an apple pie.

You do not need to pre-bake a pie crust for an apple pie or any baked fruit pie really, but we do freeze the dough to help it stay put. Pre-baking the pie crust is only required when making a custard pie OR when making a fresh fruit pie. you should probably get: Pie weights are super helpful to have for pre-baking.

It's hard to know exactly how many apples you'll need for an apple pie, but for one 9-inch pie, you probably won't need more than 10 apples. If your apples are smaller, you'll probably need 10; if they're really big apples, you'll use fewer of them.

If the recipe calls for 6 cups of sliced apples, you'll likely need about 8 medium-sized apples, or about 2 pounds of medium-sized apples. Now go fill your home with the scents of the season and bake the day away.

One of the chief reasons bakers end up with apple soup under the crust is failure to bake their pie long enough. There's almost no such thing as over-baking an apple pie; I've baked apple pies for 2 hours and longer, and they turn out just fine.

Vinegar, which is used instead of lemon juice, helps create a creamy filling with a zing. Jessie Sheehan is a recipe developer, baker, and cookbook writer with over 15 years of experience.

Here's the short version: The best way to prevent browning is to soak the cut fruit in a saltwater solution (half a teaspoon of kosher salt per cup of water) for 10 minutes, then drain and store until ready to use. The mild salt flavor can be rinsed off with tap water before serving.

Don't cut or slice them into very small/fine pieces. Keep them a bit bigger in size, so while baking they get little mushy and remain firm. If the apples are not Granny Smiths, you boil water and dunk the apples into the hot water for 10 minutes.

How do you keep the bottom crust of apple pie from getting soggy? ›

Crust dust is a 1:1 mixture of flour and granulated sugar. When baking a pie, especially a fruit pie, a couple of teaspoons of crust dust sprinkled into the bottom of the crust will help prevent the crust from becoming saturated with juicy filling as it bakes.

To bring out the best apple flavor and texture, pre-cook the filling for about 5 minutes on the stove. Bake and cool the pie, and then top with vanilla ice cream for the ultimate homestyle dessert.

All-purpose flour is an easy solution, as you're sure to have it in your pantry. Since it's lower in starch, you'll use more of it than you would higher-starch thickeners. Quick-cooking tapioca makes filling bright and clear, but also gives it a stippled and somewhat sticky texture.

Crust dust is a 1:1 mixture of flour and granulated sugar. When baking a pie, especially a fruit pie, a couple of teaspoons of crust dust sprinkled into the bottom of the crust will help prevent the crust from becoming saturated with juicy filling as it bakes.

We suspect the soggy bottom is being caused by juices from the apples in the pie, rather than the shortcrust recipe itself. Even with semolina in the bottom of the pie, to soak up the juices, there is still a risk that the juices will seep into the base.

Line the crust with foil, parchment, or a paper coffee filter. Fill it about two-thirds full with dried beans, uncooked rice (or other uncooked grain berries), pie weights, or granulated sugar. Bake the crust in a preheated 375°F oven for 20 minutes, set on a baking stone or steel if you have one.