Being a pastry chef you should know how to bake something as simple as a apple pie. But I have to admit I've had more failures over the years with this item then the most complicated desserts you can think of! One year my apples in my Thanksgiving pies turned out to have so much moisture in them that my thickener couldn't keep-up, I was so embarrassed I could have died! It was too late to fix the problem when I discovered it that year. But since that bad day I've made it my mission to never let that happen to me again.
So I've read and tried many recipes over the years to master this item (although it's always a work in progess). Just recently I bought Wayne Glissens book and he gives more detail then any other source I've found on this topic.
So here's what I've learned from his book:
There are two type of pie doughs. Flaky, where you hardly rub your fat into your flour. Mealy where you blend in the fat until it's like course cornmeal. This makes a VERY SHORT crust, "the baked dough is less likely to absorb moisture from the filling and become soggy". Adding butter or not to your crust, is another topic (I've just change my mind after using his crust). He gives slightly different formulas for each.
What he writes about "The soggy bottom"...
1. Use mealy dough for bottom crusts and flaky for the top.
2. Use high heat, at least at the beginning of baking to set the crust. He uses 425 thru out the bake (I confirm keeping that temp. with my last pie was really successful).
3. Do not add hot fillings to unbaked crusts.
4. You can layer the bottom of the pie shell with cake crumbs.
5. Use dark metal pie tins which absorb more heat.
Here's what he says about the "old-Fashioned method" for apple pie fillings (which is using raw apples in your pie). "This method is commonly used for homemade apple pies and peach pies. However, it is not often used in food service operations because of it's disadvantages. First, the thickening of the juices is more difficult to control. Second, because raw fruit shrinks as it cooks, it is necessary to pile the fruit high in the shell. The fruit then shrinks, often leaving a large air space between the crust and the fruit, and the top crust becomes misshappen. The juices given off are more likely to boil over than when the filling is cooked and the juice thickened before filling the pie.
For these reasons, the cooked fruit method usually gives better results than the old fashioned method." (He also has some other interesting facts/notes but I've already talked too much about this topic....)
I'm so happy I finally read a source that confirms what I kept noticing. I haven't found any other published source that talks about the whys like this.
