yay, tacos!

Before this, I had never had a pear pie before. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of anyone making one. I was really wary about this one. For one, I’m not much of a baker – I usually leave that to Emily. Second, the whole “no pan” thing. It confused me. Apparently, this sort of thing is traditionally considered more of a tart. I’d never made one of those either.

As I have been lately, I skipped watching the video – but I checked the recipe on the website. The only real difference between the two was one that I find most helpful. The book provides measurements in ounces. That’s all well and good if it’s meant to be by weight, but I’m pretty sure it’s not. The website provides measurements in cups and tablespoons – much easier to follow.

Are we sure this isn't a Paula Deen Recipe?

Making the pie is basically a three phase process: the dough, the filling and the baking.

The dough proved to be the biggest difficulty – for multiple reasons. First was the issue that our food processor is a little small. In order to make the dough, you mix 2 1/2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of corn meal some sugar and two sticks of butter. At best, I could fit about half of that in our food processor – so that’s exactly what I did. I did two half batches of dough mix and then combined them in a large mixing bowl for the apple juice spray and dough mixing.

Here is where the real issues popped up. According to the book, you just spritz enough apple juice and fold the dough until you can squeeze the dough and it retains its shape. Simple, right? Once you have that consistency, wrap up the dough and stash it in the refrigerator for 20 minutes or so, so that the dough can properly absorb the moisture. Great.

This is how the dough looked the first time it was supposedly ready.

When I pulled out the dough and tried to work with it, it just kept cracking apart. Yes, it held its shape, but when rolled out, it just broke apart. I had to give it some more apple juice spray to get it to be pliable enough to work with as a pie dough.

While that set up, I made the filling. This was a simple affair with no complications – and it smelled great as it all came together.

Pear Pie is filled with pears and blueberries

Once the dough was ready for working, I got it rolled out and started dumping the filling on top. As I mentioned, this is more of a tart than a pie. You fold the edges up, but you don’t cover the whole top with dough/crust. As I folded the edges up, the dough snapped off at the creases. Not a huge deal – I just squeezed the seams shut again – but I was a little nervous that the dough may still not be quite right.

It's like a volcano of fruit

Into the oven for 30-ish minutes and allow the smells to waft through the house.

Taking it out of the oven, I was re-assured by how great the final product looked. Setting it aside, we let it cool before trying to figure out how to cut it. I was worried that cutting this, everything would just spill out everywhere. Finally, I loaded up the episode on Youtube and saw that when Alton cut it, everything stayed in place. If I had done everything correctly, mine should as well.

Hopefully it doesn't all fall apart as soon as I cut into it

Thankfully, it sliced fine and everything kept its form perfectly.

Verdict
I kind of have trouble calling this a “pear pie”. When you eat it, you get a much stronger taste of blueberries and butter. Granted – this could be due to the fact that my pears were a little overripe, but I don’t think so. The cause of the taste of butter is obvious: there are roughly 2 1/2 sticks of butter in this thing. Seriously, I’m not convinced that this is not really a Paula Deen recipe.

That said, this pie/tart is awesome. It’s a great flavor, and aside from the difficulties with the dough, is fairly easy to make. I don’t know if this will replace our apple pie for holiday get-togethers, but we’ll definitely be making this again.

Alton Brown No Pan Pear Pie Rating:

Sliced, it retains its shape, form and buttery flavor