Welcome to summer in Atlanta.  I’m looking forward to the surplus of delicious fruits and vegetables.  I’ve planted herbs and tomatoes.  I’m done with finals.  I’ve switched to lighter beers.  And I’ve been harvesting mulberries.  Ergo, mullberry pie!!

It’s been fun picking berries in metro Atlanta. Every few minutes, someone will stop and ask me what I am doing; whether those are blackberries; are mulberries really edible, can they taste some; what do I do with them; etc… (?- I don’t know how to correctly punctuate this sentence)  I feel like an unofficial and unqualified advocate for urban food gathering.  I also feel personally responsible that mulberries aren’t the most delicious berry in the world.

Mulberries are kind of like a subtler blueberry with the texture of a blackberry.  Not very tart, and as far as berries go they’re fairly unremarkable.  However, they’re available in abundance. They’re free.  They look beautiful.  And I’ve been having a blast tossing them in savory dishes where they don’t quite belong (baked asparagus and crisped tofu with a chile-mulberry sauce was quite phenomenal).  This time, however, I put them where they seemed most at home– in a pie crust.

I’ve been toying with the idea of learning to make croissants lately, and decided to do a very `rough puff’ trial here.  I made it as easy as I possibly could, just to see whether there was any promise for future pies and for more extravagant pastries.  The results look promising, and I’m pumped for further trials.

For this pie crust, I used milk as my liquid since I still haven’t replaced the pie crust vodka that mysteriously disappeared from our communal cabinet. Poor soul– that was really lousy vodka.  It worked fine, although the milk gave a kind of odd flavor to the dough.  Probably the combination of vinegar and milk.  I’d suggest chilled water and vodka if you have it. Or just chilled water.

• 5oz flour
• 3.5oz cubed butter & shortening (in any combination will work.  I’m a butter fan m’self)
• 1tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 cup of your favored liquid (or enough to make the dough workably moist)
• 1 Tbsp vinegar

Chill the dough for 30+ minutes in the refrigerator.  Remove.  This is where things get fun. Roll out one half in one direction 3 times (or until approximately 3x as long as it is wide.  Slather on a very thin layer of fat.  In this attempt, I simply used a cooking oil spray.  It worked, but I’ll probably get more legit and do a very thin layer of softened butter next time.  Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

Folding the pastry in 1/3s after sugaring. This is about as easy as I can imagine a pastry recipe can be. It did, however, almost make me feel fancy.

Fold in 1/3s, so the dough is approximately square.  Rotate 90 degrees, then repeat the rolling out/oil-sugar/folding. Rotate 90 degrees again and repeat once more.  Place in the fridge to chill while you make the filling.

A quick arithmetic note: each iteration triples the number of layers.  That means if you “roll,  oil, fold” k times, you’ll have created 3^k layers.  Here we’ve created 27 layers. Care to count?:

Layers. Like an ogre.

Divide the dough in 1/2 for a 2 crust pie.  Roll out when needed.

The filling is pretty simple.

• 2 cups of mullberries (freshly picked, washed, and with the stems pinched out)
• 2 Tbsp of tapioca starch
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1/3 cup sugar
• a pinch of salt
• 1 apple, sliced
• 1 Tbsp butter, chopped.

Almost too pretty to bake.

Meanwhile, sprinkle seasoning on the remaining dough scraps, place on a cookie sheet, and put them in the oven.

It’s like a pie cracker. Yum.

They’ll be done in about 10 minutes (take them out when the edges are golden).  I usually use cinnamon sugar, but used sea salt and pepper today for a savory treat.  This will tide you over as delicious aromas waft out of the oven.

Pie, reporting for duty.

Enjoy!!!

You can’t quite see in the above shot– but the crust did indeed get some nice layering due to the puff process. This shot kind of shows it:

Good till the last bite. Here you can see some of those 27 layers.

It was pretty tasty.  Not too sweet, good texture, and I had fun making a pie from hand scavenged berries.  I don’t recommend going out and buying mulberries explicitly for this.  Blackberries are way more delicious.  But if, like me, you find yourself with mulberries wasting away along the sidewalks around you– put them to good use!!!  Additionally, you’ll see more rough-puff pastry crusts in future pies.

Peace out, and eat more pie!

A note: lately I’ve been hearing from people who actually use my recipes (at least as inspiration).  The idea of someone miles away recreating a taste I’ve constructed is mind-boggling.  I’m always happy to hear your feedback! And let me know if there’s anything I can do to make these recipes simpler to follow.

A second note: if you have an idea for a pie that you think would work (or maybe that you think wouldn’t work, but would be ridiculous) feel free to leave a comment or send the idea my way through some alternative means.