- Today on America's Test Kitchen, Bridget makes Julia fresh peach pie with all-butter lattice top. And Jack talks about sweeteners. It's all coming up right here
on America's Test Kitchen. (upbeat music) - The only thing better
than enjoying a big piece of peach pie in the height of summer, when peaches are at their best,
is having your dear friend, make it for you. - Make it with you. - (Julia laughs) Touche. - We're gonna make this
together. A beautiful peach pie, juicy, succulent, gorgeous crust. And that's where we start. - Okay. - Okay. And we're using
an all-butter pie crust, so you know it's gonna be delicious. But we wanna make sure
it's nice and tender, still stands up to the peach juices, but it has a little bit of
a flakiness to it as well. - Okay. - So we're going to use a
total of 20 tablespoons. But for our first part, we're going to grate four tablespoons. I'm just going to take a pairing knife and score it right at four tablespoons and make my way around here. Just go through the wrapper. - Leave yourself a handle. - I've got a butter handle. Makes it easier to snack on. (Julia laughs) And I'm gonna grade this right
on the holes of a box grader. - Smooth like butter. - Oh it is. And once you start getting to the wrapper. - Yeah, take it easy there. - All right. So let me
just give this to you. - Okay. - So I'll put the graded
butter right into this bowl and we wanna get this super
cold so that it stays chilled when we go to roll out the dough later on. So I'm gonna put it in the freezer. It just takes a few moments
for it to get nice firm. - Okay. - We've got some flour in here. I've got one and a half
cups of all purpose flour. That's seven and a half ounces. I'm going to add a little bit of sugar, two tablespoons here. And I've got some salt here. This is a teaspoon of
just plain old table salt. All right, and I'm just gonna
blitz this a couple of times until it's incorporated. All right. I mentioned more butter.
We have more butter here. 16 tablespoons of super cold butter. So just pile these in. Break em up, about half inch pieces. And now I'm gonna let this whirl
for about 40 to 50 seconds. If I have to go in there
and scrape it down, I will. But I really want that butter
to start to coat the flour at this point, make it almost waterproof. Et voilà. - You really made a dough out of that. - I love this method
because it really does make an easy to roll out pie dough that's still really nice
and flaky and tender. So we're gonna break that
up into two inch chunks. All right. So that's all broken up. Now I'm going to add a
little bit more flour. This is another cup, five
ounces of all purpose flour. And we're going to use that to
make this into more crumble. So lid goes back on, I'm gonna pulse this four to five pulses. And what I'm looking for
is the largest pieces to be about an inch. - Okay. - All right, let's take a look. I'm gonna use this little spatula here. So you see there's some bigger
pieces, some smaller pieces. Looking pretty good though. - Yeah. That's looking more
like a traditional pie dough at this point. - Exactly. All right. So now I'm
going to dump this out into a bowl here, but if you
wouldn't mind, while I do that, can you go get that butter that I graded? - You bet. - Here you are my darling.
- There you go. This is the super cold,
really well chilled butter. Now this is going to go
into our mixture here. You could use a spatula for this, but I really like to get in
there and kind of break apart the butter. Make sure that it's coated
with the flour at this point. All right. So this is looking pretty good. Last ingredient for our pie
dough is water, ice cold. - Yep. - So I'm using a total of a half a cup. It's okay if a couple of
little cubes get in there. I'm gonna start off with a quarter. And at this point, obviously it's not going
to be totally absorbed, but I'm looking for most
of it to be absorbed and kind of evenly dispersed. - Mmhmm - That looks pretty good.
- Mmhmm. - Starting to look a little more crumbly. - Yep. - All right. Now I need another quarter
cup of the ice water. And now I'm just going to toss this. - Half a cup of water for
two and a half cups of flour. That's a lot of water for a pie dough, but that's why it's so easy to roll out. - That's true. And it's also, don't forget,
we're making a double crust. - That's right.
- Very special double crust. And now I'm just going to toss this and mix it with a spatula here until it starts to form a dough. Pressing this into a mass so I can really see what
a half of it looks like. There we go. We're gonna
divide this into two. Doesn't have to be perfectly
even, but close enough. There we go. And you can feel
how sticky that dough is. You want it moist enough so that it's going to
roll out beautifully. Just going to take my plastic wrap, start to kind of shove it into a disc. - Love this method. - I'm looking for a five inch disc, but I just wanna get it so
that there aren't any fissures or cracks. And at this point I can start to pad it
into a five inch round. All right. So that looks great. Now I'll do it with the second round. And then after that, these are
going to go into the fridge and they'll stay there until
it's really nicely chilled, and the pie dough is hydrated. That's gonna take a minimum of two hours, but you can leave it
in there for two days. Mmmm. - Oh goodness. That smells good. - I've got three pounds
of ripe, juicy peaches. Now you want them a little bit soft. Not too soft because we wanna peel them, and it's really easy to peel
them with a Y peeler by hand. But if they're too ripe, you can still use 'em in this recipe. You're just going to need
to blanch the peaches. You can go check that out on
our website for instructions. So now I just wanna get rid of the skins, little fuzzies here. - Now have you ever used a
serrated peeler to do this? - They're fabulous for that as well. - Yeah. - So just a little shimmy. When they get little slippery, sometimes you don't wanna
put any pressure on them. So now we need to get rid of the pit. Peach holder. Just gonna take a knife and
work it around the equator here. Rotate the peach, just like that. - Oh, you hit the lottery. - That's a nice little, free stone. All right. So each of these
halves, I'm gonna cut in half. So quartering each whole peach. And then each of these halves, I'm just gonna cut into thirds. - Nice big junks. - Yes. Peaches are generous fruit. (Julia laughs) They love to share their
juice with everyone. And in a pie that's not such a good thing. Cause you'll end up with
peach soup en croute. - Mmhmm and a soggy crust. - We do not want that. We want to contain the peaches, control the peaches if you will. So I'm going to macerate these peaches and it's going to help to
release some of their liquid. But for now, again, that's
three pounds of peaches and a half a cup of granulated sugar, tablespoon of freshly
squeezed lemon juice. This is a teaspoon of graded lemon zest and a pinch of salt. This is an eighth teaspoon of salt, just enough to heighten the flavor. I'm gonna toss these. - Ugh, I could eat those right now. I'm starting, mouth's starting
to drool a little bit. Those look so glossy and the
fragrance they're giving off is outta this world. - So I need to leave this be, I'm gonna let these sit here at room temp, so you can leave it for an hour. And during that time the sugar is going to start to pull
out some of those juices. (upbeat music) - Now you may think sugar is just sugar. It's sweet and otherwise
not that interesting. I'm here to tell you otherwise. And in fact, I keep seven different
forms of sugar in my pantry. Let me explain why. Now we're gonna start
with the thing I know you already have, which
is granulated sugar. This is from either sugar
cane or sugar beets. It is the most versatile choice. But it's close cousin
here is superfine sugar. Superfine is really the
best choice for things where you want the sugar
to dissolve quickly and where gritty texture
would be a problem. Sponge cake, shortbread, meringues. Now if you get caught
without superfine sugar, you can simply throw granulated
sugar in the food processor, 15, 20 seconds, and you're
gonna have something that's a pretty close approximation. Next up is confectioner sugar. Now this is basically
pulverized granulated sugar with a little bit of corn starch added. Now you could replicated
this also at home, but it's gonna take a long time. Honestly you should just buy it. You're gonna need it
for dusting over a cake, for making glazes and for making candies. Next up, molasses. Now
technically this is not a sugar. This is a byproduct of
the sugar making process. When it comes to molasses
you can use any kind. Mild, unsulfured, robust,
except for blackstrap molasses. It's really quite bitter. In addition to baked goods, we often use a little bit of
molasses in things like a chili where we want a hint of sweetness, but we want the complexity
and the bitterness that comes with molasses. Now I mentioned molasses
because that's the thing that differentiates the brown
sugars from the white sugars. I've got dark brown sugar
here and light brown sugar. Basically the dark brown sugar
has 6 to 7% molasses content. The light brown sugar has just 3 or 4%. If you're somebody who's
constantly finding that your brown sugar is rock hard, you can take a cup of granulated sugar and either a tablespoon of
molasses for light brown sugar, or two tablespoons of
molasses for dark brown sugar and make a quick
approximation of brown sugar. Last but not least on the table I've got turbinado sugar here. It's Demerara sugar, sugar in the raw. It has these really hard granules. And the reason why that's
important is because it's really not a substitute
for granulated sugar. It won't dissolve and you
end up with those chunks in the finished product. Now it is lovely for sprinkling on top of, let's say muffins for instance. Or if you want to create a
crackling crust on a crème brulée this turbinado sugar,
that's the best choice. So sugar, there's a reason
why I keep seven of them in my pantry. (upbeat music) - I told you I was gonna put you to work. - And I like it. (Bridget laughs) - It's time to roll out our dough. Again, it chilled for a good two hours. We let it sit out for about 10 minutes so it's a bit more malleable. - Yeah, it feels perfect. - And I need you to get that dough round until it's about 12 inches. Now, in the meantime, I'm
going to roll out this round until a 13 by 10 and a half
inch rectangle, rectangle. We are making lattice. - Aha. - Anytime you're working
with a juicy fruit, a lattice top pie is perfect.
- Mhmm. Allows for evaporation of
the extra peach juices. - That's right.
- And it's pretty. - That's right. It is pretty. All right. - So 12 inches for me.
- Yes. And you wanna see my cool technique? - Do I.
- I do this. - Oh, cause you're going in a square, so you're starting it in a square shape. - I kind of start it in a square shape. - That makes sense.
- That's exactly right. And I like what you're doing there. You are rotating the
dough as you roll it out. - I'm a spinner. - What's great about
working with pie dough and especially important
with butter pie dough is anytime it gets warm,
you can put it onto a tray and put it right back into the fridge and let it cool down again. - Let's see how I'm doing here. Oh, just shy of 12 inches, which is good. Cause now I can start to really
hone in on that round shape. It's a little thin over here. All right, Bridget, how are you? - I'm perfect. - It's pretty round. - All right.
- It's a rustic round. - I've got a nine inch pie plate for you. - Oh, a nice heavy one.
- Yeah. So if you wouldn't mind rolling
that into the pie plate. - Got it. Using my rolling pin as a nice way to transfer
the dough gently. Captain, we have made it. - That is gorgeous. Yep, if you could just loosely
cover that with plastic wrap. - You bet. - Now I've got 13 inches this way and I'm looking for 10
and a half this way. So this is lookin great. - Sure does. - All right. So I've got
a rimmed baking sheet, little bit of parchment on it. And I'm just going to transfer the dough right onto that. And like you, I'm gonna cover it loosely
with some plastic wrap. All right. We just don't
want it to dry out. - Yep. - And then these are going
to go into the fridge and we want them to get nice and chilled. And we keep 'em in there
for about 30 minutes. - Okey-doke. (upbeat music) The lattice dough is nice and chilled. We can cut strips. - This is one of my favorite parts. - So one of the things that I wanna do is kind of tidy up these edges. So I'm going to take about a quarter inch off of the long edges using my ruler as a guide here. There you go. - Hmm. - This creates that nice
little edges on the lattice. - Mmhmm. - So now I want to cut eight,
one and a quarter inch strips. Luckily for us, the ruler is
one and a quarter inches wide. So I'm just gonna line
it up on this first cut. Don't wanna use too much pressure, and then keep moving down the line. All right, I'm gonna keep cutting these until I have eight strips. Then after that I'll put them
back on that baking sheet and put 'em back in the fridge. Let 'em chill for 30 minutes. - Okey-doke. - Look at what a half an
hour can do to a peach. - Those are some juicy peaches. - A lot of that liquid has
come out of the peaches. They've broken down a
little bit, softened. So now we wanna create
something called a peach mortar. Yeah. Think about it. We've got these big chunks
in here and we wanna have a little bit of that peach
kind of puree in between. We don't want the whole
thing to be pureed. Just enough.
- Okay. - So I'm going to take a cup of peaches. Super juicy peaches. Just put it in a little bowl. Now I'm gonna mash this with a fork. All right. This is starting
to look pretty good. Takes a little effort at first. So I'm gonna set this
aside. Try not to eat it. For the rest of the peaches,
we now need to drain them because we wanna separate the
whole peaches from the juice. So right through a calendar
into a big, old bowl here. - Oh goodness. - Look at the color of
that juice down there. - It's incredible. - All right. So I'm gonna put the
peaches back into that bowl. If I could hand that to you. - You bet. - We want to collect a half
a cup of peach juice here. - You're good. - That's it?
- That's it. - Half a cup. I'm gonna go
ahead and put this in a skillet, and we'll get back to
that in just a moment. Now, when it comes to thickening peach pie or any kind of fruit pie, you know, we love a lot of
the different thickeners for different reasons. There's
tapioca flour, corn starch. We're gonna use two different kinds here. I've got a tablespoon of corn starch and I'll sprinkle it
right over the peaches. That's not a lot of thickener. - Just enough to absorb
any excess moisture that comes out after this point. - That's right. So this is not the only
thickener that we're gonna use. So for all those juices, we don't wanna use corn starch for that cause we end up with a gloppy mess. We're going to use fruit pectin. - Clever. I like the combo
of corn starch and pectin. - So just enough that
it's going to thicken it, give it a little bit of body, but not so much that we're making a jelly. - That makes sense. - This is low-sugar pectin
and it's two tablespoons. Going to add an equal amount, two tablespoons of granulated sugar, quarter teaspoon of cinnamon, and a little bit of nutmeg. Just a pinch. Freshly ground is great.
- Mmhmm. - All right. So just whisking
this together to break it up, break up all that sugar. And now I'm going to add the
pectin right into the skillet. I'm gonna whisk this together. All right. So I'm gonna turn
this to medium-heat here. And we're gonna cook this until it's just slightly thickened, it starts to look a little less cloudy. And that's gonna take anywhere between three to five minutes. - Okey-doke. That smells incredible. - Peaches, cinnamon, sugar. That's it. All right. So this looks great. It's slightly thickened. It's turned a little bit more translucent. I've killed the heat underneath
here because it's time to add our peach mixture
right into the pan. There we go. That's for you. - Mmhmm. - We can't forget our
little peach mortar here. Our peach paste. - I love that trick. - And I'm gonna toss this carefully. That peach syrup is super hot, but we're not cooking this
mixture anymore on the stove top. We wanna retain the big chunks of peaches, the best that we can cause we know it's gonna
spend some time in the oven. That is looking pretty darn good. Now I've got your beautifully
rolled out bottom crust here. So let me go ahead and
pour this right in there. Ooh, pack it in. - All that goodness. - No peach left behind. Let me just zhuzh it. Now we do wanna get it a
little bit flattened here. Just a tad. It's gonna make it easier
for us to apply the lattice. So we're gonna make an
actual lattice here. Real live lattice. - It's just not that hard. - It really isn't. Especially once you get into the rhythm. So I'm gonna take four strips
and place them right on top. - Boy, that dough is handling beautifully. - Isn't it?
- Yeah. - It's really, really chilled. All right. So we're gonna
label these 1, 2, 3, 4. - All right. - So for a lattice you
just want to lift one, and three, and kind of tuck this towards
the edge of the pie this way. Now we're gonna do the
same with two and four. I'm gonna go ahead and do it like this. Put another lattice strip
right there. Tuck it in there. And just make sure the
lattice is relatively even. And then one and three go back. - Mmm, beautiful. - How's that?
- Love it. - So now I'm gonna work my way around. Just cut any excess dough. I want about a half inch overhang. Use a pair of scissors. You
can use a pairing knife. I like to pinch the dough
as I work my way around. Let's make this pie pretty. I've got a little bit of flour here. So the dough can start
to get a little sticky. We want it to stick together,
but not to our hands. So I'm just really kind
of sealing that lattice to the bottom crust. Pinching it, making it
a little bit thinner. - Mmhmm. - Gonna create that lovely edge. I'm just gonna fold both the top lattice and the bottom crust that's overhanging, right underneath itself. - Sealing the edges. - Sealing the edges. - And I love a really nice, substantial crust that's rolled under. I don't like it when
they're really, really tiny. I just kind of gingerly
work my way around, making a little bit larger
crimps, just like that. - Nice.
- What do you think? - I like it.
- Does that work? - Yeah, it's gorgeous. - Don't worry about any
excess flour on your fingers. Much better for your finger to release and not take the dough with it. The final zhuzh. We want to give this a
little sprinkling of sugar. That's gonna make it
really nice and sparkly. A little crunchy. Now to get the sugar to stick just a light mist of water and
then a tablespoon or sugar. - Mm mm mmm. - Isn't she pretty? - I think she's ready for the oven. - I think you're correct.
It's time for baking. So I've got a preheated
baking sheet in the oven. The oven is set pretty
high temperature, 425. We're gonna start it in
there for a good 20 minutes. After that I'm gonna reduce
the oven temperature to 375, rotate the pie and let it
go another 25 to 30 minutes. - Okay. And you really want you do
that preheated baking sheet if you use a metal pie plate. If you use glass, it could shatter. - Right. Let's get into the oven. If you wouldn't mind
getting the door from me. - You bet. I smell it. Ooh, beautiful. - Come here with me. Now obviously we don't
wanna eat it right now. We're gonna let it cool
for a good three hours before we cut into it and eat. - That makes sense. Cause it's lava hot and
we need it to set up. - That's right. Three hours later, this is what we get. - I think it's gonna be worth the wait, but there's only one way to know for sure. - We should eat it. Just have to have a moment. See these little drips of peach juice. That's kinda like peach candy. - Yeah.
- All right. I'm gonna give you a beautiful slice here. Take my time. Cut through the bottom. - The fact that you're
cutting through the bottom means that that bottom crust is not soggy. - That's right. - Which makes me very happy. - Notice that I don't do small slices. - I'm very thankful for that. - Put a little sweetened whipped cream would be perfect here. - I've tried so hard to hold back. I really just need to taste this now. - Mm. - The peaches are perfection. It tastes like a fresh peach that's just been kissed by
the oven under the crust. - There's no doubt that
we're in peach season. - Yeah. - Little bit of cinnamon in
there. What do you think? - Just a little bit. I like it. It's just a background note that adds a little bit of complexity, but really it's all about the peaches. - The best part of this,
we made it together. - The best part of this
is that we have more. (Julia laughs) - I retract my statement. - Bridget, it was fun making pie with you and I'm enjoying eating it even more. - Okay.
- Thank you. - You bet. - If you wanna make this
incredible summer peach pie use a combination of
cubed and shredded butter when making the dough. Drain the peaches and use both corn starch and pectin as thickeners,
and make a lattice top crust. From America's Test Kitchen,
a perfect fresh peach pie. Bridget, you've out done yourself. - Well we're almost outta
peaches, so I'll get the car. Road trip. - Okay, Thelma. - Thanks for watching
America's Test Kitchen. What'd you think? - Well, leave a comment and let us know which recipes
you are excited to make. Or you can just say hello. - You can find links to
today's recipes and reviews in the video description. - And don't forget to
subscribe to our channel. - See you later. - I'll see you later. +
