I didn’t know how to bake a pie. I was more into hunting and turning a wrench under the hood of my old red truck.
The cinnamon-sugar-encrusted latticework of a warm, homemade apple pie slice sitting next to a scoop of cold vanilla ice cream persuaded me to learn. The crust snapped in my teeth. The soft filling warmed my tongue in contrast to the cold ice cream. It was a paroxysm of flavor and textures in one bite.
This work of art was mostly derived from powdery substances that a strong wind could steal from your hand. Add some cold water and butter and heat and you achieve a transformation. Maybe brighten someone’s day.
The first apple pie that I made? Not pleasant. Not good.
The stories of families handing down recipes over generations allured me. We have a bread recipe that’s working on at least it’s third iteration, if not more. But people don’t bake pies as much anymore because store-bought pies are easier to share than investing time into a homemade pie from scratch.
In a modern world where traditions are forced more and more into hiding, I felt that pie baking could use some backup.
My wife and I have five children, two of them resilient, self-governing girls. One, an artistic young woman who would walk alone into an all-consuming fire before ever following a crowd. The other is nine. She just got her back handspring. She thinks she’s a young woman already and is quite happy to fit in, until it no longer suits her, of course. One of our friends labeled her “extra spicy.” They are so similar in genetics that watching the little one grow is a rerun.
They go from soft banter while painting nails together to some of the most shrill, horrible names they could call each other, sometimes within seconds.
A while back I decided that breaking them up was a waste of my time and not something I needed to concern myself with and I am a happier person now.
I tried to teach our three boys to bake. Cliches exist for a reason. I’m an outlier, for better or worse, I suppose.
Conversely, I asked my daughters to make bread and pie with me this past Thanksgiving. They jockeyed and jostled and bickered for the spot or job closest to me while we turned flour into pastry.
The ancient Egyptians were baking pies around 9500 BC. Honey inside a crust that they made from barley, oats, wheat, or rye.
We shall not buck tradition, even if other people would rather buy a sub-par pie made by a stranger or refuse to bake.
Creating something from ingredients or imagination encapsulates me. Scratch, they say. Stories. Songs. Gardens.
Pies.
I tell them the pie crusts we mixed the night before were cold in the fridge, and we need to prepare a cool rolling surface. Put the oven on 450.
Sowing seeds is in my blood. There’s only one generation between me and my farming ancestors. I plant seeds or little one gallon plants and then I spend years growing them into walk-through gardens. Thirty years ago I sowed a seed in a heart, as one was sowed in mine. A story rife with blooms and blights and falling leaves and spring buds.
A relationship. A marriage. Children.
A family.
My grandmother’s hands showed me how to not overwork the fragile bond between flour and baking yeast and warm water. My father was raised on that bread. I have it memorized, but I still use the recipe every time. The page in the church recipe book she gave me with her bread formula on it is stained with old flour and Crisco from over twenty years of me baking loaves that I assure you place a distant second to hers. That fresh bread smell, though. It’ll bust any diet restriction, guaranteed.
I had also made cinnamon rolls from scratch. Talk about a long undertaking for a brief, albeit tasty reward. The girls and I made these together, too.
Regarding pies, however, I knew nothing. I researched. I learned so I could teach anyone else who would learn. So we could make a family recipe and pass it down.
The top crust of a pie was developed as a method to preserve the food inside it. Fruit. Vegetables. Meat.
I like apple. Like the Pilgrims, I prefer a pie with spices. Cinnamon. Cloves. Nutmeg. Pepper, even.
You know what pie represents for me? The smell of it all mixed together? Winter. Warmth. Lazy smoke from a morning chimney as a family awakes. The yellow window panes of daybreak in a snow-covered landscape.
It takes moisture, air, and heat. Steam is key.
They roll the crusts under my direction. I’m impressed with their skills.
The intricacy of flaky pie crust begins with loads of frozen butter chunks and ice cold water and not overworking the dough. Not even a little bit, mind you, so that the heat and steam and air can puff it up to crispy, flaky perfection.
A well-prepared tangy filling consists of real apples and spices and sugar and corn starch and kosher salt. Lemon juice and zest. All of it simmered and cooled. Peel the apples, or don’t. Removing the peels makes for a more visually appealing filling.
Some bickering ensues. A competition on rolling pie crust. Then quiet music and work.
Someday the wind will bring forth young men who will carry my daughters from my hand, a little at first, then most of them in a flourish. Traces in the wrinkles of my palms.
But at least for now, school is still in session.
They roll it on a cold, floured work surface by the threes of the clock until it’s a twelve-inch circle. They listen to my dad jokes. I am so funny they can’t even laugh.
The oldest one already knows how to check the oil in her car and pays a lot of her own bills. She can say “no” with confidence in her eyes. She loves movies where women overcome stereotypes and adversity, but she also loves children. She’ll be a fierce mother one day.
We wait until the pie filling is mostly cool before we roll out the dough. Timing is everything. We use the rolling pin to transfer the crusts to pans. I help the little one and I drop the crust off the pin onto the counter. She looks at me in horror. I tell her it’s okay.
She won’t leave this home at eighteen without knowing how to start and push a lawnmower, just like her older sister has done since she was big enough to manage it. And I hope in their private conversations down to the gas station for a soda they teach each other to only depend on a man if they want to. That’s what we’ve tried to teach them, anyway.
Pie crust likes to be made cold and baked hot. I remind them to turn the temperature down to 375 at fifteen minutes. Wait 45 minutes longer. They sing along to Christmas music, too early in my opinion. They wrestle and I tell them to settle down and hide my smile at the life in our home.
The wind will come. That damn, insatiable wind.
When they’re old and my ashes are enriching the soil of some garden I planted, they’ll watch one of their children or grandchildren eat a bite of delectable apple pie.
They’ll smile because they knew how to bake it.
