Rustic Deep Dish Peach and Berry Pie

Get ready to restrain yourself because you’ll need all the strength you can muster to stop yourself from eating this entire pie in one sitting! I decided it was time for me to make a pie, however with all of the fruits in season now in Southern California, I couldn’t decide which fruit to use: strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, or peaches?

Well, I decided to use them all for this deep dish rustic pie- called Rustic since you don’t need to make the crust look real fancy and this pie only requires one pie crust, not two.

All you do for this recipe is cook the peaches with some sugar and corn starch (for thickener), add all the other fruits, toss all the ingredients into a casserole dish and top with a pie crust- and oh, don’t forget the dab of vanilla ice cream on the side!

 Ingredients

Crust

• 120 g (1 cup) all purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 egg yolk
• 60 g (4 tbsp.) cold butter cut into small cubes
• 80 ml (1/3) cup cold water

Filling

• 4 – 5 medium peaches, pitted and cut into 1 -inch chunks
• 100 g (1/2 cup) caster sugar
• 2 tbsp. cornstarch
• 60 ml (1/4 cup) cold water
• 3 cups assorted berries (blueberries, blackberries, strawberries and raspberries)

Directions

1. For the crust: combine the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder in a medium bowl.
2. Make a small well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add the egg yolk. Stir with a spoon until the ingredients come together.
3. Cut the cold butter into small cubes and add several cubes at a time to the bowl. Using your palm of your hands, rub together the butter and dry ingredients together briskly until the mixture resembles fine crumbs of sand. This technique is called sable (sand) in French. *
4. Add the cold water to the ingredients and form a ball of dough, using your hands. If necessary, add a bit more cold water to the dough if it is too dry.
5. Place the dough in plastic wrap and place in the fridge for at least 1 hour until the dough is chilled.
6. For the Fruit Filling: pre-heat the oven to 400 F ( 200 C). Peel the peaches and cut into small pieces. In a large saucepan, stir together the sugar, water and cornstarch together and heat until the mixture thickens. Stir in the peaches and simmer for about 5 minutes until the peaches soften.
7. Remove the pan from the heat and gently stir in the other fruits. Now pour the fruit mixture into a medium-size casserole dish or into a deep dish pie plate. Dot the fruit mixture with several pats of butter.

1. Remove the dough from the fridge and roll-out onto a lightly-floured piece of parchment paper or directly onto your benchtop (counter-top in American-speak).
2. Place the round crust on top of the pie filling and let the crust over-hang about 1 inch over the sides of the dish. Trim the crust using kitchen scissors.
3. Brush the crust with egg wash (whisk one egg together in small bowl and apply to the crust using a pastry brush).
4. Cut a 4-inch ‘X’ in the center of the pie and gently fold back the points to make a square opening.
5. Bake the pie on a foil-lined baking sheet for 35 – 40 minutes until the fruit is bubbly in the center. If the crust browns too quickly, cover the pie loosely with foil after 20 minutes.
6. Let pie cool and serve plain or with ice cream.

 * You can also a food processor to blend the cold butter pieces into your dough, if desired.