The Core Facts

Overall verdict: An apple pie that is bold in flavour but fell apart physically. The pastry is very crumbly and the apple is overpowered by cinnamon but there’s plenty of pastry and plenty of apple.
Timings: 30 mins prep + 1 hour chill + at least 70 mins bake (longest oven time yet)
Sugar: 150g
Butter: 227g
Type of apple: Granny Smith

The Long Peel

Martha Stewart is the US equivalent of Delia Smith with a bit of Kirstie Allsopp thrown in. She is known for her books, magazines and TV programs on baking and cooking but also on interior design and homemaking.

Martha has many different recipes for apple pie so I picked one that looked simple – Martha Stewart’s Apple Pie Recipe.

The Pastry

There’s a lot of chilling of pastry in this recipe. The lumps of pastry for the base and lid are chilled for at least an hour. Then they’re rolled out and chilled as flat discs. Then the pie dish with the pastry base goes back to the refrigerator again.

I could clearly see the benefits of the chilling – for one thing, the pastry was less sticky when I was rolling it. But very cold pastry is hard to manipulate and the pastry kept cracking when I tried to line the pie dish with it. On my first attempt, I had to do a lot of patching. On the second attempt, I gave the pastry a few minutes to acclimatise, which worked better. But Martha’s suggestion of folding the pastry disc to fit the dish would absolutely not have worked for me – it just would not have folded.

Having said that, I really like the practicality of Martha’s recipes. The frequently asked questions part allows you to see the issues that novice bakers like me are having, which I found reassuring.

The Apples

Martha uses a lot of apple for this one. She recommends 4lbs (1800g) and I only had around 1500g of Granny Smiths. However, I’m not sure I could have fitted much more into the pastry case so I’m satisfied that I wasn’t far off.

The apples are coated in salt, flour, sugar and a whole teaspoon of cinnamon. Clodagh McKenna’s apple pie recipe also uses a teaspoon of cinnamon but for some reason it was much more overpowering in Martha’s version.

The Bake

This was the longest bake so far; 20 minutes at a high temperature and then another 50-60 mins at a lower setting. I had to follow her advice to cover the pie with foil, otherwise it would have looked burnt.

The Dish

Martha says to use a 9 inch pie dish, which is 23cm. My usual dish is 23cm, so she’d have been happy with me on that score at least.

The Hot Slice

This pie did not slice well.. The pastry was very fragile and broke up easily.

The Rested Result

For the first time in this project, I failed to lift half the pie onto a plate – a big chunk fell off. You can clearly see the crumbliness of the pastry and the brown of the cinnamon in the apple:

If We Repeeled

• I would use less cinnamon, although Martha probably wouldn’t agree

Scores

Simplicity of bake: Not complicated but it takes time
Pastry texture: Very crumbly – it melts in the mouth but also on the plate
Pastry taste: It had a strong, almost bitter pastry taste that complimented the apple
Apple texture: Very soft, as you would expect after 70 minutes in the oven
Apple taste: The apple was overpowered by the cinnamon
Apple to pastry ratio: Very good – lots of apple and lots of pastry
Overall score: 7