Greetings, and welcome to Living the Pie Life. In this and future postings I will be celebrating all things pie. Baking, pies, eating pies, homemade pies, bakery pies, diner pies, fruit pies, cream pies, savory pies, pot pies – they’re all open topics here. Pie road trips, pie in popular culture, pie in history, pie wisdom. You name it. If it’s about pie, it has a home right here.
So if you have a favorite recipe or restaurant you want to share with me, by all means let me know about it. Or if you have a favorite story about pie, I’d like to hear that, too.
Bacon is a food that provokes strong opinions all around. Some folks subscribe to the idea that bacon makes just about anything better. Others take the opposite view that bacon just about ruins any other food, and is awful all by itself. I find myself in the middle, thinking that bacon can be a culinary treat when combined with the right foods. Bacon Apple Pie falls into a category of good things made better with bacon.
The magic of the Bacon Apple Pie is the sweet and savory mixture of the two main ingredients. Many people might suspect that the bacon would overwhelm the apples. Bacon certainly has both a strong taste and aroma. You cannot walk by a diner serving breakfast without smelling the bacon. Nor can you walk into a home kitchen where bacon is being cooked without smelling bacon and nothing but bacon. Surprisingly, then, when combined with apples in a pie I was pleased to discover, along with my tasting panel, that the bacon is not dominant.
In addition to the favorable taste, the pie earned praise for its presentation. It begins as a traditional apple pie in a bottom pastry crust. Then the fun begins. Bacon strips are layered in a lattice work over the top of the filling. I used Neuske’s smoked bacon, which worked wonderfully. The key is to get a high-quality bacon that is cut thicker than your typical store brand bacon. Thicker bacon holds it’s form better when baked on the pie.
Another trick is to make sure you make a pastry crust of at least 14-15 inches in diameter when using a nine inch pie plate. The extra pastry can then be folded back over the edges of the bacon before being placed in the oven. This keeps the bacon from curling up at the edges.
You’ll notice two things when biting into your first piece of Bacon Apple Pie. First, despite being in the oven for about an hour, the bacon is remarkably tender. Fans of extra crispy bacon might be disappointed, but for the rest of us this is a real delight. The bacon achieves its tenderness as the moisture of the apples steams up from below, which also helps to prevent bacon shrinkage.
The second delightful thing about this pie is the way the bacon and apples complement each other. Wrapping a piece of bacon around a slice of apple with your fork, and sliding that first morsel into your mouth is an experience to remember. The salty smokiness of the bacon and the juicy cinnamon sweetness of the apples are a heavenly match.
Bacon Apple Pie may not please everyone, but even some skeptics might be surprised if they give it a try.
