Are you someone who shies away from crafting a homemade pie due to the complexity of making a crust? It’s not as complicated as it seems. This story and recipe is for you!
My Great Grandmother Schade (famed for her Pecan Crescents) was an amazing pie baker. She truly had the touch. She was the first generation of our family born in this country, and lived from the days of horse and buggy to seeing men land on the moon. In fact, she was one of the first woman drivers of that newfangled contraption called the “automobile” in the area. Her pies were legendary; as a child I was invited into her small kitchen to learn her magic. The butter and shortening had to be the right temperature and cubed to the correct size with a surgeon’s skill. Her secrets included ever over-mixing, and adding a special ingredient: Heinz Vinegar–always Heinz.
She truly had a passion for everything American, “Old Glory, and Red White and Blue,” and she adored John Phillip Sousa’s (The March King’s) music. Every time we would work on pie dough I can remember her collection of Sousa’s marches playing on her crank Victrola. She would say, “Making a pie crust takes precision” like a great march, and no one did a march better the Mr. Sousa. She would listen to the music, roll the dough, turn the dough, and go on with her loving marching orders.
Now google a fine march from John Phillip Sousa and off you go, marching into the kitchen!
–Michael
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