Savory Pies With a Lot of Help From Erin Jeanne McDowell's "The Book of Pie"

    My husband, Jules came back from a trip to Alaska over a year ago raving about salmon pasties, little hand pies that were stuffed with a savory salmon filling. Since Alaska has super fresh salmon, they were unbelievably amazing. He's been begging me to make them ever since. 

Here's the thing: I'm a cook. 

    I like to experiment and change things up based on what I have in the house and throw in a little of this and that based on intuition. That's not great with baking. There's a lot of science involved and ratios should be followed. So, I'm no exceptional baker. I'll admit, when Jules sent me the recipe for some salmon pasties I was a bit intimidated and it looked like A LOT and the ingredient list for that particular recipe was a mile long. I needed something I could make with things I usually have around the house.  

But then something great happened. My dreams came true. 

    After I dropped hints for several weeks, Jules bought me Erin Jeanne McDowell's The Book on Pie as a gift. I follow Erin on Instagram and had watched this YouTube tutorial on making the perfect pie crust. I felt ready. 

    I scoured her book for a savory pie recipe to adapt for salmon and I really didn't need to look far. Her chicken pot slab pie was the first savory pie recipe listed in the book and was essentially a classic pot pie recipe -think: onion, celery, carrots, and peas- BUT WITH A BOTTOM CRUST, THANK GOD. This was the perfect recipe to adapt for salmon. 

    I added a couple potatoes, subbed veggie stock for the chicken stock that was called for, and used her rough puff pastry recipe for the top and bottom crusts. About six hours later, the result was two beautiful savory salmon pies. 

Two major take-aways: baking rough puff pastry takes time. Egg wash is what your pie is missing.

    I read through the recipe and noticed all of the "chill" times and sort of mapped out my day, but man, this took some time. And more time than I thought. One of the things Erin says in her video is to feel free to chill the dough any time it starts to feel soft and sticky. I think this is great advice and I followed it a couple of times, just to be sure. Solid butter is really important for achieving lamination (layers of dough). 

    So, especially since this was my first time, I probably let the dough chill longer and more often than necessary, but if you're in my boat and are fresh to pastry dough, I highly suggest allowing yourself plenty of time - like a whole day- to make something with rough puff. It was worth it for me. This dough was super flakey, almost like phyllo dough in some places. 

    The egg wash. I am a huge Great British Baking Show fan, so I've seen people use egg wash on baked goods, but in person I was really blown away by the difference. The egg wash made the pie such an appetizing color and really added a professional, shiny finish. I can't go back!

Crusty

    As I mentioned, I made two pies. Erin's original recipe was actually for a two-crust pie baked in a casserole dish, but I wanted it to look more traditional, so I baked it in two batches in two pie plates. Because of this, we had one pie for dinner and one for later which I popped into the fridge. I was a bit worried about the filling making the dough soggy overnight, but this was a very sturdy pie crust. I was able to take the entire pie out of the pie plate the next day and the bottom was still crispy and firm.

    In fact, the crust was a tad dry. I'm not sure if this was because it was rough puff or if I didn't add quite enough water to the dough originally, but I think I might do two things. 1.) Add more water to the dough next time and do rough puff again and 2.) Try this pie with Erin's "All-buttah" dough to see if I can get the moisture I'm looking for while still having a sturdy pie.

The Recipe

    Unfortunately, I can't give you the recipe here. I don't think I deviated far enough from Erin's recipe to call it my own. I wholeheartedly recommend her new book if you love pie. She really lays it out and has come up with so many amazing ideas for crusts, fillings, and decorating. I can't wait to try another pie from her book. I also recommend watching her instructional videos. She is really great at showing steps in detail and explaining why she uses specific methods and tools. She is often featured by Food52 and NYT Cooking on their YouTube Channels.