Pie: 300 Tried-And-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie

by Ken Haedrich

Book Overview

Deals with the subject of American pie. This title includes an anecdotal chapter that walks home bakers through pastry making how to's. It features answers to questions home bakers want to know. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1558322531
• ISBN13: 9781558322530
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Harvard Common Press
• Length: 639 Pages
• Weight: 3.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 8.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Bought this book 10 years ago..

A go to pie book for any pie..any...even basic pies as apple and pumpkin get a new twist in this book and the very basic version. Also many pie crusts in the book..

Easy As Pie

Finding a great pie anywhere is extremely difficult. In fact, it is rare that I would even ask for pie as a dessert choice because they are usually not very good. However, my hankering for pie reached a frenzy after watching the movie "Waitress". For those unfamiliar with that movie, its main character explains her feelings through coming up with creative pies. When the movie's credits began, my longing for pie took hold of me. I was convinced, after many attempts, that there was no really great pie out there, so I decided to make my own. After a great deal of research, I found this book. It is really outstanding. The writing is fun and easy to read. It is well organized and takes the stress out of baking a pie for a first timer like me. Ken makes it seem so simple that during the past month I have made over 20 pies, ranging from fruit to nut to cream pies. I took a class about baking pies, but it did not hold a candle to Ken's book. Those twenty pies have mostly been baked for other people. The joy a fresh baked pie gives to someone makes me feel like I am making a difference. People love getting homemade pies, so much so it almost brings them to tears. My husband's co-workers, people at the gym, employees at stores that I frequent, and neighbors have been the beneficiaries of most of them. The reviews have been outstanding! People have said that they are the best pies they've ever eaten. At first I thought they were just being nice, but those platitudes have come from non-pie lovers and even the most finicky eaters. People are so excited about getting pies that I just can't stop making them! I would like to say that the best place to get a great pie is my house. However, that sounds a little conceited and is not one hundred percent true. The truth is, if you want to have a great pie make one of your own using "Pie: 300 Tried and True Recipes for Delicious Home Made Pie". You will not be disappointed. The only problem is that you might not be able to eat pie at a restaurant again. On the bright side, you will always have something great to bring to a potluck, cook out or give as a gift. Pie really is the best desert out there. It combines all the best of creativity, complexity, and bakery goodness. Is it time to pity the pie? I think not. It is time to make pie! So "pie it forward"

Buy it for recipe collection to supplement book on technique.

`Pie' by culinary journalist and editor, Ken Haedrich is an imposing tome of 639 pages that the author freely admits is the largest single book on this subject. And, in my experience, he is probably right, although Rose Levy Beranbaum's `The Pie and Pastry Bible' weighs in at 692 pages, although it is not exclusively about the classic American sweet pie with its characteristic 9 or 9 ½ inch diameter and sloping sides, which distinguishes it from the French tart. While sheer size alone suggests this book has a lot going for it, the contents confirm that this is a serious reference of recipes and techniques for that great American dessert. Unfortunately, this may still not be the very best text you can get on making good pies. There are three major reasons for that opinion. First, the aforementioned `Bible' and Susan Purdy's `As Easy as Pie' are both superior texts for presenting good illustrated techniques for how to deal with all the ins and outs of making that elusive tender and flaky piecrust. Haedrich has very few diagrams to illustrate his techniques. The only one I saw was a series of diagrams for assembling a lattice top crust which you commonly see on cherry pies. Other techniques such as pastry cutouts may have been decorated with a single drawing, but hardly a full illumination of the subject. This is doubly irksome as Haedrich's basic technique for transferring the rolled pastry to the inside of the pie plate is not the most common method. In fact, I find his recommended method just as prone to mishaps as the three other methods I have seen or read about. Second, I really didn't find his coverage of pie pastry methods to be as complete as what we have in the two other references I cite. Unlike Beranbaum and Purdy, Haedrich is just a bit too connected to a particular technique for each task. He even goes so far as to `debunk' some methods such as the technique of rolling pastry dough out between two pieces of plastic. Now it just so happens that based on a demonstration done by my hero, Alton Brown, on an episode of Good Eats, I actually used this method, using a disassembled freezer storage bag for the plastic, and I am happy to say it worked like a charm. Since it was very easy to flip the pastry over and reflour its surface now and again, I was able to roll it out to a very decent circle with no mishaps. And, I had no problems transferring it to the pie dish using the fold in half method. Beranbaum and Purdy tend to give us a range of possibilities, and let us pick the method that works best for us. I find it especially odd that Haedrich doesn't include a description of the classic French technique for working butter into pastry, which Purdy covers to excellent effect. Third, for a book this big dedicated exclusively to pies, I would have expected it to cover all the standards, then move on to variations. Oddly, I discovered that almost every `classic' pie recipe I looked for was missing from this book. I looked for a standard pea

All I can say is....FANTASTIC!!!

Having been raised by my southern grandmother, I have spent a very long time trying to just come close to one of her delicious pies. All of that training she gave me as a child on the perfect, easy pie crust flopped each time. My filling was too runny, too sour, too sweet, too...well, just too. And, yes, I've bought every pie book possible, only to have each attempt turn out inedible and my esteem riddled with disappointment. My family had given up. That was until I bought this book. I didn't think it possible, but everyone now thinks I'm a pie genius. My husband couldn't believe the Bumble Berry Pie with the unusual shredded top crust. He says he never wants a regular top crust on a fruit pie again. Our friends ate a whole Chocolate Brownie Pecan Pie in one sitting. And the Blackberry Silk...mmmmm. I could go on and on...and not one failure. Thank you, Mr. Haedrich. After years of failing, I'm now remembering what it's like to sit at my gran's table and wait in anticipation for that delicious pie to come out of the oven. And now my family is doing the same.

Sweet, savory, and very highly recommended

Other pie cookbooks on the market range from the mix-based quick pie guide type to the master recipe collection intended for advanced cooks: Ken Haedrich's Pie: 300 Tried-and-True Recipes For Delicious Homemade Pie falls somewhere inbetween the two, providing beginners with an exceptionally easy basic understanding of how to cook a pie, while packing in dishes from bakeries, cooks and specialty shops across the country. Pie features tried-and-true recipes for 300 delicious creations, all of them sweet, savory, and very highly recommended

Pie Lover's Utopia!

I would easily rather have a good slice of pie than any other dessert, especially over cake. For my birthday I would order lemon maringue pie rather than cake. Here is a compendium of 300 recipes gathered from various sources and all tested out by this pie guru. Immediately upon receiving this newly published volume, my mouth watered and I baked three pies in three days: Watermelon Chiffon Pie; Indiana Butterscotch Pie with a Checkerboard Crust; and Caramel Apple-Pecan Pie. Each turned out fantastic! Not that hard to bake if one has baked some before, into which category I fit. This large volume will be used as I have over 250 more luscious recipes I can't wait to try. Neat to consider making some and giving them as gifts. Why not take a pie along as a gift when attending a dinner invitation? This book has great intro sections on pie making, equipment, resources, and around ten color photos. Each recipe comes with discussion of its origin and pointers on successfully pulling the recipe off. I especially appreciate his pointers on problematic steps in the prep, and what results to expect as one proceeds. This is just an amazing work, and the world of pie lovers will truly embrace it!