Rustic Apple Pie - An experiment

I've been very busy lately and I feel like I've missed the opportunity of sharing tons of things in Steemit. There are so many things I'd like to do every day in general and my days feel shorter and shorter. I've been trying to wake up earlier than usual to do some work out before getting ready to go to work. So lately I literally turn off at 9 p. m. and I can't process anything else but food, shower and bed. I haven't even done my daily meditation time before bed since I am so tired.

Anyway, enough complaining and let's go straight to the point: I wanted to share a recipe of mine this time, thi is an experiment I did last Friday.

I say an experiment because I didn't follow a recipe. One day, I was searching Google images for ideas of layouts for the cookbook I am making —long story for another post—, I entered the search parameter "cookbook sheet" and I saw this beauty:

I've just found out it's called Apple Galette. I don't know why I didn't look up for the recipe, but when I saw it, I inmediately imagined how it could be prepared. I envisioned pizza dough and a layer of custard bellow the apples.

Well, I called my experiment Rustic apple pie, and let's leave the galette for another day.

For pizza dough, I've always used Martha Stewart's recipe, which is quite simple. But I wanted to prepare it with whole wheat flour, so I looked up for a complementary recipe and I found this recipe by Sally's Baking Addiction.

She goes for 3 1/4 cups of whole wheat flour, but I went half whole wheat and half regular all-purpose flour. The dough was the most complicated this time, since I had to use a lot of regular flour when kneading after proofing because it was too sticky, and when I knead it flat into a rectangle and tried to put it over the greased pan, it broke many times and I had to knead all over again. Could it be the whole wheat flour I used?

This recipe it's a corrected version of my pie, since I realized afterwards some mistakes I made. I had to rush it since I learnt I had a friend coming over for once (it's pronounced OHN-say and means "eleven" in Spanish; in Chile instead of having dinner, we usually have a midafternoon or evening tea with bread and pastries; it's called "once" since in old times, when old ladies had their midafternoon tea with a shot of liquor, "aguardiente", word that has eleven letters; it's was a code talk so people didn't find out they were getting drunk☺). So I didn't get time to let the custard and the apples to cool, and I think that gave moist to the dough so it took longer to bake than in the recipe. I didn't have time to cool the whole pie either (so much for surprise visits; nah, it was a nice one, so it's worth it), but the result was delicious anyway.

Rustic Apple Pie

Ingredients

dough

• 2 teaspoons or 2 packages of dry active yeast
• 1 tablespoon of sugar
• 1 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1 tablespoon of honey
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 cups all purpose flour

Custard

• 3 yolks and 1 egg
• 6 tablespoons of sugar
• 4 teaspoon of cornstarch
• 2 cups of milk
• 1 tablespoon of butter (optional)
• A pinch of salt
• 2 sprigs of cinnamon
• 1 piece of orange rind
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
• 4 oz raisins

Apple layer

• 3 apples
• A squeeze of lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• 1 tablespoon of sugar

In a bowl, pour yeast and sugar over 1 cup of lukewarm water and let to proof for five minutes until it gets bubbly.

Add olive oil, salt, honey and cinnamon and mix well. Add flour cup by cup, beating well, when it's consistent and doesn't stick to the bowl, poor over a well-floured surface.

Knead 5 minutes, form a ball, smear with oil, wash the bowl and leave the dough there, cover with a cloth and let it to proof during one hour in a warm, draft-free spot.

Meanwhile, prepare the other layers. Beat the yolks and the egg with 3 tablespoons of sugar until frothy. Dissolve cornstarch in a little milk and add it to the eggs. Heat milk with the rest of the sugar, butter, salt, sprigs of cinnamon and orange rind. When it's about to boil, remove from heat and add vanilla. In a single stream, pour egg mix beating well, return to heat and simmer beating constantly until it thickens. Let it cool covered with plastic wrap at room temperature; when it's cool enough, put it in the fridge covered at least 30 minutes.

Peel, core and slice thinly the apples. Pour a squeeze of lemon juice and cinnamon. Heat butter and sugar and when they melt, add apples and cook a little, until they are soft, and remove.

Leave the juices to boil until you get a syrup, stiring constantly, don't let it burn.

Preheat oven at 475 °F. Grease a rectangular oven pan. Put dough in a floured surface, sprinkle dough with more flour and knead with a rolling pin until you obtain a flat rectangle; each size must be 4'' larger than the pan.

Carefully place the dough over the pan, pressing the sizes; pour custard, make it even with a spatula and sprinkle raisins (or you can mix raisins with custard); and put apple slices over the custard.

Fold in the sizes of the dough, leaving a square of apples exposed.

Bake for 10 minutes, brush the dough with syrup, reduce oven temperature to 428 °F and let 5 or 10 minutes more. Leave to cool before serving.

Ta-DAH! This was the result.

I hope you liked my recipe :) I'll definitively try it with regular pizza dough, not whole wheat, and also try the Apple Galette, which seems more pizza-like.

I appreciate your upvote, resteem or comment.