Millions of Peaches... Peaches for Me...

So. I made a pie. 

There really is no better feeling than making an entire pie from scratch and have it come out beautifully (or not so beautifully).  My Aunt Patty made pies with ugly crusts.  One year, she came to Christmas at my house with a pie plate as part of my gift (with a pie in it, of course!) and she told me about how she liked her crusts no matter how ugly they were. Everytime my pie crust is a little funny I just mush it together and think of Patty.

Peaches are in season right now so I decided to adapt this Blackberry and Nectarine recipe from Vegetarian times to make a peach pie.  WARNING: I LOVE TAKING PICTURES OF PIES.   There will be no apologies for overloading this post with beautiful pie making pictures.  I am not going to post the recipe, since I linked to it. I'll just tell you some tips, and changes from me. Here goes.

FIRST: FREEZE EVERYTHING!!! Before I make my pies, I freeze my rolling pin, my food processor (I use it to make the crust) my flour, my margarine, etc..   Pie crust will come out so much more flaky if everything is icy when you use it.

Also, quality flour is everything. War Eagle Mill. Enough said.

I pulse my crust in the food processor. The idea is to get whatever fat you are using (oil, shortening, margarine, I use Earth Balance vegan margarine) to be in tiny little pebbles covered by flour. THIS is how you get the flakiness.  If overworked, you get a chewy unflaky crust, so the food processor works best. Otherwise you'll need a pastry cutter. This is how it should look before you form it into a ball:

After you have made two dough balls (one slightly larger than the other) just chill...  Put them in the fridge to chill for an hour in plastic wrap while you make your filling.

Lots of recipes call for you to blanch nectarines or peaches to help peel them. Do yourself a favor.. SKIP IT. It is too time consuming. Bust out your peeler and get to peeling like a potato.

Another tip about the filling.  This recipe calls for tapioca flour, but you can sub arrowroot powder in my opinion.  If you use tapioca flour, you'll need a little more than called for if you use peaches. I subbed the vanilla bean for 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract, and used 3 1/2 lbs of peaches, and no other berries.

Now it's time to roll the crust out. Confession: I have no good tips for this, because I always tear my crust and have to do some magic patching... so maybe you should google that one. The only advice I can add is that you should use the larger doughball to make the bottom crust so you have plenty of edges leftover to fold over the top one.
Notice husbands mouth in corner... I have got to start putting bells on him.  Always sneakin into my pictures..

I always use a pie crust protector for the first half hour of pie baking so my crust isn't too brown. You can buy them anywhere that sells baking supplies.

Voila! It's pie!

It was the flakiest, most delicious crust I've ever made!  We had some after it cooled last night.. and I can't wait to have pie for breakfast tomorrow morning!