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The time between Thanksgiving and the end of the year is pie season.

“That is true,” Alison Ladman confirmed. She is the owner of and head baker at the Crust and Crumb Baking Co. in Concord. “We make a lot of pies this time of year. A whole lot of pies.” She said her feelings on pies get complicated toward the end of the year.

“Yeah. Um, my feelings on pie…,” Ladman said. “Look, it’s the month of November. We eat, drink and breathe pie and rolls for the whole month. By the end of the month we’re all very sick of pie. But they are so good! There are lots of different flavors of pie. There are so many different ways that you can make a pie. [Pie is] one of those ‘there’s something for everybody’ kind of dishes.”

To put some perspective on Ladman’s “eat, drink and breathe pies” experience: Her bakery bakes 1,100 pies in two days during Thanksgiving week, all of which are rolled out by hand.

“We do use a sheeter for some of our smaller things, but for the bigger pies it’s just better to hand roll them,” she said.

So much experience has honed Ladman’s crust technique.

“We have a variety of rolling pins here, because everybody likes something different,” she said. “We have the kind that are a straight dowel, we have the kind that are a tapered dowel, and we have the kind with handles. I personally prefer a tapered dowel. I feel like I have better control over [the dough with] it. If you have a part on the edge that needs to be rounded out a little bit more, you can kind of turn it a little bit better with the taper.”

She likes to roll the dough out on a floured wooden table. “We do crumb toppings on almost all of our pies versus a double-crusted pie,” she said. “Crumb toppings are a different method of production than doing a double-crust, so we need to kind of pick one way or the other.”

And then there are cream pies, with a crumb crust. “We make them all completely from scratch here,” Ladman said, “And that includes making the graham crackers, because we’re gluttons for punishment.”

Most bakeries with a reputation for pies find themselves similarly snowed under with orders at this time of the year. Jakie O’Dowd, the owner of The Sweet Spot in Weare, thinks that there is a huge demand for pies during the holidays but that many home bakers lack confidence.

“I think what mainly holds people back from doing pies is that working with the pie dough can be tricky,” she said. “I feel like Thanksgiving is our biggest holiday, and I think it’s because people are intimidated. But I actually find it very fun and rewarding. At Thanksgiving time, we literally do hundreds of pies, and in the midst of it I’ll think, ‘Oh, let me do pie again.’”

O’Dowd had a very traditional introduction to pie-making.

“I worked at a farm down in Littleton, Mass., called Springbrook Farm,” she said. “They’re one of the oldest farms in Massachusetts — in fact, the land was deeded to the owners by King George, and it’s still in the same family. All their baking that I learned there was very traditional, very old-school. So I make pies in an old-fashioned way; the crust I use is the crust that I learned at the farm. It’s partial butter, partial shortening, so you’ve got the flavor from the butter and the flakiness from the shortening. It’s a really nice pie dough to work with.”

The Sweet Spot bakes traditional holiday pies for its customers, but O’Dowd said it has been an education to learn what that means in different families.

“I didn’t even put chocolate cream pie on the menu our first year,” she said, “and everyone was calling and asking for it, and I was losing orders. So it’s on there now because people want to take one apple pie, one chocolate, and they’ll take one of each, and then they’ll order rolls. I feel like apple and chocolate cream are our biggest pie orders, but you get a lot of pumpkin too. Apple is our No. 1, then chocolate cream and pumpkin might be tied for second.”

Lauren Collins-Cline, the owner of Slightly Crooked Pies in Bedford, sympathizes with home bakers who find pie crusts intimidating.

“Interestingly, we don’t have a strong pie tradition in my family,” she said. “We had pies for Thanksgiving, but we would buy them. My pie story started when I hosted my first Thanksgiving and I wanted to make a pie and I wanted to make it from ‘scratch.’ I use air quotes around that because I used a store-bought crust that year. I looked up a recipe online and I made the pie and people loved it. It was the highlight of the meal and that gratification was so strong for me that I just kept making and working on and perfecting pies. Pies are a total confidence-builder. I want to quote Tommy Lasorda and say, if I can do it, you can do it. Because, again, like when I started out, I was just — I was dangerous in the kitchen. It was a big risk for me to be in the kitchen. So my encouragement is to start to find a simple recipe and just give it a try.”

Another problem, she said, was the pressure from food media to make fancier and fancier recipes each year.

“Content is king,” she said. “[Food writers] have to constantly be reinventing their content. And bless the people who get paid to do that — that sounds like a dream job. But how many times in a day do you see people sharing a recipe that they saw that takes this new spin on an old classic? Don’t limit yourself because you’re intimidated by that high level of expertise. Just baby steps, you gotta start somewhere.”

Collins-Cline said she thinks pies are tied in with our image of tradition and of ourselves as Americans. “It is a nostalgic dessert,” she said. “A pie often has a recipe that gets carried down through families. It’s something that may not be as awe-striking in appearance as cake can be, but when you look at it it’s like the tea kettle on the stove. It just evokes this image of grandma in an apron serving it at the table.”

Or buy your pie
If you’d prefer to order a pie this holiday season, check out our listing of Thanksgiving take-out offerings, which includes quite a lot of pie, in the Nov. 14 issue of the Hippo. Find the issue in the digital library at hippopress.com; the story is on page 22.

Pie recipes

Most families have their own traditional pie recipes. Here are nine recipes from area pie enthusiasts that have proven track records.

Cranberry Pie

Debbie Bouvier, New Boston

This recipe from my wife is a holiday crowd-pleaser:

• 1 cup (198 g) sugar
• 1 lb. fresh cranberries (454 g or 1⅓ 12-ounce bags)
• Zest of 1 medium orange
• Juice of 1 medium orange
• Premade pie dough
• 2 Tablespoons milk

Place one of the pre-made crusts in a pie pan and crimp the edges. Use a fork to poke holes in the bottom of the crust [what bakers call “docking”]. Par-bake the bottom crust for about 15 minutes at 375°F.

Wash the cranberries. Place in a pot with the orange juice, orange zest and sugar. Cook on medium heat until a third to half of the cranberries have popped and the mixture is thick. Stir frequently.

Once cooked, pour the mixture into the par-baked crust. The pie looks best when topped with either a lattice top or some cutouts. Cutouts can be easily done with cookie cutters. Once satisfied with the top, brush it with milk.

Bake for approximately 35 minutes at 400°F.

While many holiday foods are heavy and serious, this is tart and citrussy. It makes an excellent holiday dessert, especially with vanilla ice cream.

Butterscotch Pie

John Fladd, Hippo Food and Drink Guy

I’m a huge fan of butterscotch, and I like the flavor that comes from using real butter and real scotch.

• 4½ Tablespoons butter
• ¾ cup (160 g) brown sugar
• ¾ cup (170 g) boiling water
• 2¼ Tablespoons cornstarch
• 1½ Tablespoons all-purpose flour
• ⅓ teaspoon kosher or coarse sea salt
• 1¼ cups (284 g) milk
• 3 egg yolks, slightly beaten
• 1 Tablespoon scotch – I find I get the best, most butterscotch flavor from Glenlivet

The key instruction for this recipe is “whisk.”

Melt butter over low heat, and cook to a golden brown. Whisk in the brown sugar. It will seem really stiff at first, but the sugar will melt within a couple of minutes and become liquidy. Whisk it continuously until it comes to a boil, then whisk in the boiling water. Be careful; it will spit a bit at first. Whisk the mixture together, then remove from the heat.

Separately, whisk the cornstarch, flour, salt and milk until they are completely combined, then whisk them into the brown sugar mixture, return it to the heat, and bring it to a boil. Let it boil for a minute or so, whisking constantly, then remove it from the heat again.

Very carefully, temper in the egg yolks. This means stir a spoonful of the hot mixture into the yolks at a time, until you have gradually brought them up to temperature and diluted them enough that they won’t scramble when you add them to the hot pudding mixture.

Whisk them into the hot pudding mixture, then whisk in the scotch. Adjust the amount of whiskey to your taste.

Let the mixture cool for 20 minutes, then transfer it to a pre-baked (what bakers call “blind baked”) pie shell, then chill for several hours. Serve with whipped cream. If you wanted to add scotch to the whipped cream instead of vanilla, who could blame you?

This is an adult’s butterscotch. The real butter, the caramelized brown sugar, and the scotch combine for a deep, mature butterscotch that is about as far from a butterscotch candy as a pinot noir is from a grape soda.

Maple Pumpkin Pie with Pecan Streusel

Denise Nickerson, owner of the Bakeshop on Kelley Street

• 9-inch pie crust of your choice
• 1 15-ounce can puree of pumpkin
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 3 eggs
• ⅔ cup (206 g) maple syrup
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon nutmeg
• ½ teaspoon ground ginger
• ½ teaspoon salt

Place all ingredients in a bowl and whisk until combined. Pour into an unbaked pie shell. Bake at 350°F for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and add topping in a ring around the top edge of the pie. Bake an additional 20 to 25 minutes, until a butter knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Topping

• 1 cup (120 g) all-purpose flour
• 1 cup (213 g) brown sugar or maple sugar
• ½ cup (1 stick) melted butter (less if using maple sugar)
• ½ cup (57 g) chopped pecans

Combine all the topping ingredients in a bowl with a fork.

Peanut Butter Pie

Evelyn Redmond, organizer of Goffstown’s Annual Pie Competition and Auction: “I won my first blue ribbon with this pie recipe.”

• 1 cup plus 2 Tbsp (300 g) creamy peanut butter, divided
• 1 8-ounce package cream cheese
• ½ cup (99 g) sugar
• 1 12-ounce container (4½ cups) frozen whipped topping, thawed and divided
• 1 prepared chocolate pie crust
• 1 11.75-ounce jar Smucker’s^® Hot Fudge Spoonable Ice Cream Topping, divided

Beat together 1 cup of peanut butter, cream cheese and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed, until well-combined. Gently mix in 3 cups of whipped topping until thoroughly combined. Spoon the mixture into the pie shell. Using a spatula, smooth and spread mixture to the edges of the pie.

Set aside 2 tablespoons hot fudge in a resealable bag. Warm the remaining hot fudge and spread it over the pie. Refrigerate until fully set, then spread remaining whipped topping on top.

Reserve 2 tablespoons of hot fudge topping into the corner of a resealable food storage bag and set it aside. Microwave the remaining topping on high for 1 minute. Stir. Spread topping over pie, covering the entire peanut butter layer. Refrigerate until fully set. Spread the remaining whipped topping (1½ cups) over the hot fudge layer, trying not to mix the two layers.

Cut a small corner from the bag containing the hot fudge topping. Squeeze the bag to drizzle topping over the pie. Place remaining 2 tablespoons peanut butter in a resealable food storage bag; cut bag corner and squeeze to drizzle in the opposite direction of the topping. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Maple Bourbon Pecan Pie

Leah Borla, owner of Sweet Love Bakery in Goffstown

• 6 Tablespoons (¾ of a stick) butter
• 1 cup packed (198 g) light brown sugar
• 1 cup (312 g) real maple syrup
• 3 Tablespoons maple bourbon (regular bourbon works too)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 3 large eggs
• 1½ (170 g) cups pecans
• A 9-inch pie crust (store-bought is OK!)

Heat oven to 350°F. Place pecans on a baking sheet and toast for 3-4 minutes until brown. Remove from the oven and let cool. You can also pan-roast them on medium-low heat until they are fragrant.

In a medium-size saucepan, over medium heat, melt butter. Add brown sugar and maple syrup and stir until the brown sugar is fully dissolved. Bring the mixture up to a simmer, then remove from heat. Place in a bowl to cool for about 10 minutes.

Whisk eggs and add to the butter-sugar mixture. Add in bourbon, cinnamon, vanilla and salt, whisking together until well blended. Pour mixture into uncooked pie shell.

Place toasted pecans on top of the sugar filling. Place pie on a baking sheet. Lightly spray a piece of foil with cooking spray and place over the pie. Bake pie in the oven for 20 minutes. Remove foil and bake for an additional 20-25 minutes until the edges of the pie are set. The center will be slightly jiggly but will set.

Place on rack until cool. Serve with fresh cinnamon maple whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Sweet Potato and Pecan Pie

Addie Leader-Zavos, Eden’s Table Farm: “This double-layered pie has a pecan pie baked on top of the sweet potato filling. It is a favorite in my family for Hanukkah.”

• 1 partially baked 10-inch pie crust (baked for 15 minutes at 375°F)
• For the pecan topping:
• 1 large egg
• ⅗ cup (119 g) light brown sugar
• 1 Tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ⅛ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (115 g) coarsely chopped pecans (I use halves on top — chop half of the bag to mix in the topping. Use the rest to make a design on top.)

For the sweet potato filling:

• 4 large egg yolks
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¾ cup (160 g) dark brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 Tablespoons orange juice
• 2 cups (450 g) cooked sweet potatoes, pureed in a blender, then cooled
• ¼ cup (57 g) creme fraiche

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Have your pie crust ready.

For the pecan topping: In a small bowl, whisk the egg, light brown sugar, melted butter, vanilla and salt until blended to a smooth mixture. Stir in the pecans. Set aside.

For the sweet potato filling: Beat the egg yolks, salt, and dark brown sugar in a large bowl, and beat with an electric mixer until creamy. Mix in the cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and lemon juice. Add the sweet potatoes and mix until smooth, about 1 minute. Mix in the creme fraiche until well-combined.

Pour the filling into the partially baked crust, discarding any fiber from the sweet potatoes that clings to the beaters. Bake for 20 minutes, then gently pour the pecan mixture over the partially baked pie. Bake until the pecan topping is set, about 30 minutes longer. Cool on a wire rack. Serve at room temperature.

Paper Bag Apple Pie

Rhoda Hooper, from Favorite Recipes from the Joe English Grange #56, New Boston, N.H., 1996

• 1 uncooked pie shell
• 3 or 4 large apples
• ½ cup (107 g) sugar
• 2 Tablespoons flour
• ½ teaspoon nutmeg
• 2 Tablespoons lemon juice

Topping

• ½ cup (107 g) sugar
• ½ cup (60 g) flour
• ½ cup (1 stick) butter

Make an unbaked pie shell. Pare, core, and quarter apples, then halve each piece crossways to make chunks.

Make the filling: Combine ½ cup sugar, nutmeg, and 2 tablespoons flour, and sprinkle the mixture over the apples; toss to coat. Place the mixture in the crust.

Combine the remaining sugar and flour for the topping; cut in the butter. Sprinkle over the top of the apples. Slip the pie into a heavy brown paper bag large enough to cover the pie, then fold the end over. Fasten with paper clips. Bake at 425°F for 1 hour. Split the bag to open.

Loon Chocolate Pie

Rachel Mack, Co-owner of Loon Chocolate (195 McGregor St., No. 121, Manchester, 932-8887, loonchocolate.com)

• 3 ounces Loon Chocolate Maine Sea Salt Chocolate Bar (about 1½ bars), broken into pieces
• 1 cup (213 g) sugar
• 5 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 egg yolks (save egg whites for meringue)
• 1½ cups (340 g) whole milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 Tablespoon butter
• 1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust
• Ingredients for meringue:
• 2 egg whites
• ⅛ teaspoon salt
• 4 Tablespoons sugar

Heat oven to 350°F.

Place pie crust in pie dish and poke holes in pie crust with fork. Bake until brown, about 20 minutes.

While pie crust bakes, in a saucepan, whisk together chocolate, sugar, flour, egg yolks, and milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring until it bubbles and thickens, about 5 to 10 minutes. The mixture should be thick.

Remove the chocolate mixture from heat and add the vanilla and butter.

To make the meringue, beat the egg whites and salt until fluffy. Add sugar and beat until stiff peaks form.

Add chocolate custard to the baked pie crust, then top with meringue. Bake until the meringue peaks are lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Serve warm.

Just chill

Experts offer their pie crust advice

Pies, in the big picture, are not that difficult to make. Lay down some pie dough, scoop in some fillings, top it with another sheet of dough, put it in the oven and walk away for an hour. It’s an operation of elegant simplicity.

The monkey wrench in that optimistic view of pie-making, of course, is the pie crust.

There are dozens of recipes for even a simple pie crust, and passions can run high among home bakers. It can all be a bit intimidating. But at their core, most delicious pie crusts are made with some sort of fat (shortening, butter, lard, coconut oil, etc.), some sort of starch (flour, ground almonds, cookie crumbs, etc.) and a little liquid (usually water) to bring everything together.

According to Lynne Donnelly, the owner of Bittersweet Bake Shoppe in Litchfield, overthinking and overworking are two common ways home bakers mess up their pie crusts. She likes to weigh her ingredients to make certain that her fat-to-flour-to-water ratio is right.

She demonstrated:

“We’re starting with a big bowl,” she said, placing a large, stainless steel bowl on her scale and zeroing its weight out. (This is called “taring.”) “And we’re weighing out our flour. We want five and a half pounds.”

(This recipe is for a small batch of pie dough at a bakery. It will make 18 to 20 rounds of pie dough. See below for the amounts a home baker would use.)

“OK, now,” she said, eying the gauge on her scale, “we’re going to add two pounds and 12 ounces of shortening on top of that.” She said a baker could use butter instead of shortening, but it would have to have the same consistency. “You want the temperature to give it the same softness as shortening,” she said, scooping shortening into the bowl of flour. “But we get a really nice crust with this.” She stressed the importance of using unflavored shortening. “The butter-flavored stuff tastes nasty.”

Next, Donnelly added salt. “Normally, I eyeball the salt,” she said, “but since I have a tablespoon right here, I’m going to do this officially, and add five [tablespoons]. Now, you are going to get in there and start squishing. You’re going to just keep breaking your shortening with the flour with your hands until it looks like cornmeal. You want to mix it all together. Just keep going through it with your hands, until it’s nice and fine and crumbly and everything’s well-blended and there’s no big pieces at all.” She explained this while scooping the crumbs of dough from the sides of the bowl, into the center, as if she were folding egg whites into a batter.

“Now you can pour your water in,” Donnelly said, making a well in the crumbs. “Dump the whole thing right in the middle, and then just bring it all together. Just keep pulling it together; no kneading. You don’t want it to be too gooey. Just pull it together, until the water is absorbed.”

The next step is to chill the dough. Unlike some pie doughs, Bittersweet’s does not have streaks of shortening running through it, but Donnelly said it is still vitally important to keep the dough as cold as possible. “There’s no tricks or gimmicks with this crust — no vinegars, or people with their little magic potions. It comes out the same every time. The thing is keeping it cold.”

After the dough has chilled, the next step is to form it into six-ounce disks.

“A lot of my life has been spent weighing out crusts,” Donnelly said. Each slab of dough gets formed into 3- to 4-inch disks, with care taken not to overwork it.

The last important step, Donnelly said, is to chill the dough again before rolling it out. This will give the tiny flecks of shortening time to firm up, and for the dough itself to relax and finish integrating the water. This is a basic, use-for-everything pie dough recipe. “You could also make crackers with this,” she said, “but you would have to add cheese and butter and things like that.”

Just one pie crust
For a smaller number of pie crusts, Donnelly suggested using the following proportions for each.

1¼ cup (136 g) flour
⅓ cup (75 g) shortening or butter
½ teaspoons salt
3½ Tablespoons ice water

Double this for a two-crust pie.

“Extra pie crusts can be frozen, either laid out flat between sheets of waxed paper, or rolled up,” Donnelly said.