Wild Blueberry Pie

The family had a lobster fest for Father's Day, so what better dessert to bring than Maine Wild Blueberry Pie.  I used this recipe from Everyday Pie.  

I used an all-butter crust. When making the crust, I read the essay on Sally's Baking addiction about crusts and changed my method a little bit.  I prefer to make the crust by hand and dump it onto plastic wrap and press into a disc shape.  But sometimes the crust is a bit dry and hard to roll out. So this time I added a couple more very scant tablespoons of water, and dumped the crust onto a floured counter and worked it until there was no loose flour and all the flour got fat incorporated into it. This process did make the dough get a bit warmer than I liked.  The next day when I went to roll it out, I could see a few spots where the flour was "stained" with butter in a manner resembling grease spots.  I'm not sure if due to this, or to the long baking time, but although not tough the crust wasn't as flaky as I like, either. I'm not sure if anyone noticed though, although if they did they wouldn't say anything.  Additionally, some but not all of the lattice was underbaked, in spite of being in the oven for a long time.  I cut 10 strips for the lattice, instead of 12, because I wanted them to be thicker.  That is fine and looks pretty but next time I will pay better attention the placement of the strips because I ran out and had to cut and paste shapes etc.  No one noticed because so much of the blueberry filling ran over onto the lattice that you couldn't tell.  But it may be why one of the slices I ate had dough that was a bit underbaked. 

Usually I use fresh fruit but since the recipe recommended wild blueberries for the best flavor, I chose frozen blueberries from Trader Joe's.  I did make some modifications. The recipe calls for 28 ounces of blueberries, but I added more after seeing the amount of flour and sugar that wasn't being incorporated.  I only added a couple extra ounces, but seeing the way the pie sunk a tiny bit in the middle, I think I could have added even more.  Even so once the pie was baked you certainly didn't feel it was low on blueberries, so it was OK.  Next, instead of 1/4 cup of cornstarch, I added 1/4 cup of flour plus 2 tablespoons of cornstarch, after reading the blueberry pie recipe on Sallys Baking Addiction, which had been modified from 1/4 cup cornstarch because people's pies were still runny.  Next time, however, I'd go a bit lighter on the thickener.  Finally, I added 1/8 tsp of almond extract and 1 teaspoon of rye whisky in lieu of vanilla.  I didn't have vanilla at hand.  You really couldn't taste the almond extract, so I wouldn't do that again.  When we first ate the pie, at room temperature, the day after it baked, you could taste the rye whisky and everybody thought that was pretty cool.  But when we finished the pie two days later, now warmed up in the oven, you couldn't taste the rye whisky at all.  Not sure if that was due to the two day gap or to being warmed in the oven.   Another comment: the Everyday Pie recipe calls for orange juice and orange zest, but next time I think I'd rather use lemon.  I really don't think the orange added much.

Being baked with frozen blueberries, this pie took about 90 minutes in the oven!  I baked it at a lower temperature than Everyday Pie suggests, at 390 instead of 400, because I didn't want the crust to get tough. I did bake it until the juices were bubbling and a thermometer read over 200 F.  

The feedback on the pie seemed a bit unexcited, although to me it tasted pretty good, especially because we enjoyed it with ice cream!  I didn't like it when SIL said it reminded her of a Pop Tart, but because she is a snarky person, I don't go by what she says.

I would definitely make a frozen wild blueberry pie again.  It was extremely easy to make, the hardest part was waiting for it to bake up.  Next time I would use my regular crust technique, bourbon instead of rye, and lemon instead of orange.  

                                           Wild blueberry pie.