Adding fruit pies to our menu, could use some guidance

Pizza Shop Talk The Think Tank
1

Does anyone else bake dessert items in house?

We plan on doing mostly berry and apple pies,

Here’s my snag, trying to get costing figured, what weight of dough would I be looking at for the bottom and top crusts? And what filling weights should I use as a starting point?
@Tom Lehmann
Could you toss me a few figures to get me pointed in the right direction , maybe share some crust recipes in bakers percentages?

I’d like to make a dozen or more pies at a time since we’ll be slopping up the prep area with them, we might as well go big and get a bunch done at once

Thank you in advance for any help you may offer

2

Flour 100 %

Fat 50%

Liquid 25 %

Salt 1 %

It has been a long long time since I made pie dough. I am certain we weighed each crust at 10 oz. Now, I would make max 20 crusts per time. The larger the batch you make the more likely your pie dough will come out bad.

You must work fast and and make sure everything is cold. The person I assisted put the flour in the cooler. Use a low protein flour.

If I remember more I will post it later but the bakers percentages are spot on.

As for the fat you can go half and half shortening and butter or pick one over the other.

P.S. Thanks for the info a while back on smoking bacon. I did not thank you (or get a chance to check your response until recently) because I took a hard fall in the kitchen and hit my head. Luckily, I am back in the swing of things now.

3

Thanks for the reply, thats real close to what I did for a formula. Now I need to get my fillings in percentages, how much per pie and break it down to figure yields, costs, etc etc etc
I used a 50/50 lard & butter combo for my lipids, the test bake of plain crust was very good.

4

For your procedure follow the below;

  1. Use a pastry knife for your mixing attachment. A dough hook or flat beater don’t work very well.
  2. Use a pastry flour.
  3. All ingredients should be COLD.
  4. Mix just until the fat is cut into pieces about the size of a cherry.
  5. Portion about 10-ounces and form into a puck shape.
  6. Wrap each dough puck in plastic or stretch wrap and place in the cooler overnight.
  7. Remove dough from the cooler on the following day and pin out/sheet/roll to about 1/8-inch thickness.
  8. Press into pie pan leaving excess dough draped over the top edge.
  9. Add filling (I like to use fresh sliced apples and fill the pan until it is heaped nicely, add 1/4-cup of sugar, 1/2-ounce of lemon juice, and 1-pat of butter per pan.
  10. Roll out second piece of dough and drape over the filled pan, crimp the two dough pieces together so they won’t separate, cut a couple of holes or slits in the top crust to release steam during baking, brush the top crust with milk and sprinkle with sugar and bake at 400F for about 35-minutes. If you want more color on the finished crust add an ounce or so of dextrose to the water, or you can also replace about 5% of the water with whole milk. For cherry and blueberry pies you can use prepared pie filling or you can make your own from scratch.
    Any scraps of pie dough not used can be re-rolled and cut into 2-3-inch squares, brushed with milk, and sprinkled with a cinnamon-sugar mixture then baked until crisp, serve with a bowl of ice cream.
    Fruit pizzas are also a great addition and are a lot easier to make too as you can use your regular pizza dough and bake them just as you would any other pizza.
    Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
5

Tom,
You do not pre-cook your apples in some apple juice, Or add a thickening agent such as tapioca starch, flour, corn starch, or powdered arrowroot before covering with the top crust?

Every formula that I had looked at required pre-cooking the apple filling, I was hoping to not need to do that.
I’m figuring about 2.5 pounds of apples per each 9"-10" pie

Thank you for sharing your info. Looks like pie baking day just got a whole bunch easier for me

6

GR;
Nope, no need to pre-cook the apples unless you like them mushy in the pie. No need to add additional thickener either due to the pectin content of the apples, this is why we add the lemon juice to help set the pectin. If you want to have a very firm filling you can add 1-tablespoon of corn starch (just sprinkle over the apples) per pie. You can take it a step further if you want to by using a crumb topping (streusel) rather than a crust topping. Looks great and your customers will really like the streusel topping, especially if you make it with butter rather than shortening.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

7

While I’ve never made a pie with pizza dough…I make a killer caramel apple pecan pie with a streusel topping. The texture and flavor of the streusel is so much better than just another pie crust on top. And I have never precooked the apples. Just slice them up, add some sugar, flour and lemon juice, toss them around and let them sit in a bowl while you get everything else ready. I prefer golden delicious over granny smiths. They are tart but still sweet and not as firm as the grannys. I use 4 or 5 apples for a 10 inch pie and it is about 5 inches high before baking, shrinks down to 2 inches when done :slight_smile:

8

I did 5 apple pies yesterday, in 9" tins
Per each pie i used to pie dough at 0.625 weight, 2.5 pounds of sliced apples, 1/2 cup APF, 1/2 Cup sugar, 1/2 tsp cinnamon & 1/4 tsp nutmeg tossed it all in a large bowl, ten topped the fruit with a heavy TBSP of butter, baked them at 400 degrees for approx 90 minutes each.
I used Granny Smith apples, fairly tart to start, so I did not add any lemon juice

I just busted into one of the pies to see how they turned out. I like it, but I believe I may need to add more sugar to sweeten them up considerably to fit local tastes. Or I could serve them with a ramekin of praline sauce since we already have that for our cinnamon roll Bread Pudding.
Oh, I used a dough sheeter to flatten my pie dough, had that slide out the 2nd set of rollers of the sheeter onto a sheet of parchment paper, flipped that into the tin easily enough and did the same with my top crust

Thank you for the guidance, now I am impatiently waiting until the wild blueberries are ripe (end of june, through July 15th’ish) then the raspberries, then the blackberries.
I believe we can legally use wild foraged items for baking now due to a recent rule change in my state

9

The pies sold very vigorously.
A buddy of mine had surprised me a 10 pound bag of frozen tart cherries that he couldn’t use at his place, so I baked a few cherry pies too.
Next thing I plan to tackle is Pecan pie, I know that’ll be a sloppy sticky mess from start to finish.