Look, Ma! No Pan!

Your average pumpkin or apple pie at Thanksgiving looks good. It looks like some effort has gone into the crust, maybe a top crust, possibly some artistically piped whipped cream. It's charming, in it's own way. It looks like the boy or girl next door, plenty attractive, but not likely to star in a movie. And really, we like them (both the pie, and the neighbor,) just the way they are.

There are pies that are all dolled up. They sport carefully cut out top crusts in the shape of autumn leaves, perfect lattice tops, delicately brushed with milk and sprinkled with glistening sugar, and they stand out among the plainer specimens around them. They're the prom queens and kings of pie. They might be made by pastry chefs or the neurotic woman that goes to your church. Carefully coiffed, every meringue wisp artistically draped and singed, just enough of the filling showing to show what they got. They look great, and they look like a lot of work.

Lori's Apple-Cranberry Pie

In the list of human failings, soggy pie crust is probably not the worst. Compared to child exploitation, nuclear proliferation, or suicide terrorism, it doesn't really rate. It’s totally a first-world problem.

But soggy pie crust is its own horror. One of the great characteristics of pie is that the crust has the potential to introduce texture into a dessert.

Texture isn't talked about much with desserts, but it’s very important. While you can make a pretty great dessert with only one texture, such as chocolate pudding, different textures elevate dessert to the sublime, the wonderful, maybe even artistic. I think that one of the driving factors behind the cupcake craze of the last decade has been the ease that cupcakes introduce texture to dessert. Beyond the cake, there was always a frosting (another texture,) often a topping (another texture,) and sometimes a filling (you get my point, right?)  Pie has similar possibilities: a well executed pie already has different textures built in.

Thus, my revulsion with soggy pie crust. When given the opportunity to create texture in an otherwise fine dessert, the creator of the pie instead chose a path that resulted in a crust that absorbed moisture and slowly became one with the filling. Where the filling ends and the crust begins is hard to determine. Furthermore, pie can be wonderful finger food, just pick up a piece and carry it back to the football game if your wife isn't watching. But you can’t do that with soggy crust.