Pie dough 101 + a fruit-filled pie

This week's pie dough (pastry flour, shortening, water, salt and brown sugar) was worked just until it was roughly incorporated, refrigerated for about a half an hour, then fully worked and rolled out. Something I didn't know: the 3 key elements to pie dough are 1 part water, 2 parts fat (shortening) and 3 parts pastry flour.


The filling for this Strawberry Rhubarb Apple Streusel Pie included frozen rhubarb (thrown in the pot first, along with brown sugar and butter), followed by sliced apples, cinnamon, lemon juice & zest and frozen strawberries. These are sauteed with cornstarch and water until filling has thickened. The topping included oatmeal, pecans, white & brown sugar, bread flour and butter, broken up until a crumble is formed. This was very sweet and the pie crust was amazing - flaky and perfect (if I do say so myself). Baking time should be approximately one hour at 375 degrees, but we used a convection oven which sped that up. I'm not familiar with baking with a convection oven, but it seems unpredictable - some of our pies turned out well, while others were a bit burnt.