Like much in life that is desirable, sour cherries are hard to come by, hard to keep and worth seeking out.—Domenica Marchetti

The (Terminally Ill) Granny Smith of Cherries

Sour cherries, aka “pie cherries,” have basically the same relationship to sweet cherries that baking apples have to eating apples, magnified. They’re much more acidic than inky Bings or blushing pink-gold Raniers. Raw, sour cherries make your mouth pucker like a slice of fresh lime, which is way too tart for most American palates (some people in Europe and Asia enjoy them). Cooked, they have far more flavor and retain their shape better than their sweet cousins, which lose their brightness and fall apart when exposed to heat.  I have nothing against canned cherry pie filling (which I think is especially fantastic on cheesecake) or the typical roadside diner cherry pie (a la mode almost compulsory). But a sour cherry pie is just an entirely different creature altogether.

Where sour cherries differ from baking apples, which tend to be crisper and slightly more durable than eating apples, is that they’re softer and even more perishable than sweets. That’s also why they’re far less common. The ones grown in Michigan—home to the “cherry capital of the United States” are bright red and look almost translucent, perhaps because the flesh is paler pink or yellow. Hanging on the tree in the sunlight, they almost seem to glow. But they’re so delicate that they will begin to fade if you even let them sit in the sunlight for a few hours. If they aren’t cooked or dried within a day or two of being picked, they will begin to rot or mold. And their season is short—they begin to ripen in mid- to late June, and the trees are barren again by mid-July. 

My maternal grandmother had a sour cherry tree in her yard, and now and then when we were in town during the critical window, she would send me outside to pick some, always warning me not to eat any. She was of the generation that considered a flaky pie crust one of the most important tests of home cooking skill—seriously, in a 1953 Gallup national survey, both men and women named pie first in response to a question about the “real test of a woman’s ability to cook.” Second place went to roasts (men) and cake (women). My grandmother didn’t just pass the test, she obliterated it. I wish I could tell you this was a recipe I learned from her.

It’s not that she didn’t cook with me—we made vinegar taffy every summer, and I remember learning to shape yaki mangu (Japanese cookies filled with adzuki bean paste) while watching grainy soap operas and game shows on the tiny television in her kitchen. But pie-making she mostly kept to herself. It was kind of a family joke that she could have three pies in the oven before anyone else was even awake—only “kind of” because it was true, a testament both to her skill and to the invisibility of much of the domestic labor she performed on top of working a full-time job and being active in her church and various social clubs and charitable causes.

My mom makes superb pies too, although less often because her familial and social obligations aren’t generally of the pie-requiring sort. I learned from her how to roll out a crust as thin as possible and get it into a pan in (mostly) one piece. The rest I’ve mostly figured out myself through trial and error and the advice of trusted sages like Alton Brown and Rose Levy Beranbaum. Regarding the crucible of the flaky pie crust, the variables that seem to matter most are what kind of fat you use and what you do with it.

Choosing Your Fat

The fat must be solid to create a flaky pastry (just like for any “short” bread, which I explain in the footnote here). Butter is probably the tastiest of the solid fats, but its high moisture content (~20%, depending on the brand) slightly compromises the texture—the water in the butter promotes gluten formation, however slight, before the fat can entirely coat the proteins in the flour. Ghee would theoretically be ideal because it would provide the buttery flavor without the extra moisture, but it’s expensive, clarifying your own is kind of a pain and—if you haven’t done it already—adds an extra step and chilling time. I usually compromise by using a 3:1 ratio of butter:shortening. I may be fooling myself, but I think I that makes the crust significantly flakier and crisper than using all butter.

As for the shortening, my grandmother was loyal to Crisco, but I avoid that because of the trans-fat issue,  which may be an unnecessary precaution since they’ve switched to a formula that’s mostly trans-fat free. Instead, I sometimes use an “organic” shortening made of 100% palm oil, and the rest of the time I use lard, which Alton Brown swears by. Taste and texture-wise, I can’t tell much of a difference between the palm oil shortening and lard. I suspect that flipping the ratio to 1:3 butter: shortening would produce an even flakier, crisper crust, although you might miss the butter flavor.

One final option: Rose Levy Beranbaum has a recipe that calls for cream cheese, which I tried a few years ago when I neurotically made four pecan pies in order to figure out which recipe to use for Thanksgiving (verdict: John Thorne’s recipe using Lyle’s Golden Syrup). The cream cheese crust was easier to work with than the butter/shortening crusts, but wasn’t as crisp as I like. I suspect that was because of the higher moisture content in the cream cheese. However, if you want an incredibly forgiving dough or a softer crust, give that a try.

Using Your Fat

You need the fat to do two things: 1) coat the proteins of the flour so they don’t form gluten strands when you add the water and 2) remain in large enough pieces to form solid layers of fat in the rolled-out pastry and melt during the baking process to leave thin pockets of air in the finished crust. Those are basically contradictory—on the one hand, you want to distribute the fat really well, which is best achieved by breaking it into small pieces. A liquid fat would actually work best. But you also need big pieces or undistributed chunks. I kind of wonder why there aren’t recipes that add the fat in two steps—the first half in liquid form and the second in small, well-chilled pieces (if you try that or know why it wouldn’t work, let me know). Instead, most pastry recipes include at least one or two, if not all, of the following steps designed to distribute the fat, but not too much:

1) cut the fat into small pieces and chill it well (~15-20 minutes in a freezer; if you have to leave it for longer, let it warm up for 5 minutes or so before trying to cut it into the crust)

2) integrate the fat into the dough by “cutting” it with crisscrossing knives, a pastry cutter, several pulses of a food processor, or by rubbing it between your fingers—but only do the latter if your hands are cold enough that they won’t melt it

3) use ice-cold water, which will help keep the fat cold and prevent it from melting before you bake it

4) chill the dough before rolling it out, usually for ~30 minutes (you can leave it for up to 2 days and let it warm up for 5-10 minutes before rolling it out)

5) handle the dough as little as possible from the time you add butter or water until the point where you put it in a pan

There are other things that help but may be out of your control, like working in a cool kitchen (which is part of the reason my grandma always used to make her pies in the morning) and having cool hands. Fortunately, even a less-than-optimally flaky pie crust will generally still be delicious (see: pies at diners and grocery store bakeries across the country, which tend to be way better than the cakes in the same dessert cases). I’m not as good as grandma yet, but I’m getting there.

Recipe: Sour Cherry Pie (makes one 10” double-crust pie)

For the crust:

• 12 T. butter
• 4 T. lard or shortening (or more butter)
• 2 1/2 cups (12 oz) all-purpose flour
• 1 t. salt
• 4 T. sugar
• 4-6 T. ice water

For the filling (adapted from What’s Cooking America)

• about 2 lbs (4 pint boxes with pits and stems; 5-6 cups unpitted) sour cherries 
• 1 or 1 1/2 cups sugar (start with 1 cup and taste, add more if necessary)
• 2-4 T. tapioca (see step 6)
• 1 t. almond extract (optional, may be substituted with vanilla)
• 1/4 t. grated nutmeg or 1/2 t. cinnamon + 2 T. sugar (optional)
• 2 T. butter (optional)

1. Divide the butter and lard into 1/2” pieces and place in the freezer for 15-20 minutes.

2. Pit the cherries, and (optional thickening step 1:) toss them with the sugar, and let them sit while you prepare the crust

3. Whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt or pulse to combine in a food processor. Add the chilled butter and lard and cut them into the flour with a pastry cutter, two crisscrossing knives, your fingertips, or a few pulses of the food processor until the mixture is a coarse meal and the largest pieces of butter are about the size of small peas or capers.

4. Add the ice water, one tablespoon at a time, pulsing or stirring just until the mixture begins to form a dough. If you squeeze a handful of the crumbs and they hold together, you’ve added enough water. If not, add a bit more.

5. Divide the dough into two equal portions on separate pieces of plastic wrap. Use the plastic wrap to press the dough into a flat, round disk about 1” thick. Chill for at least 30 minutes or up to 2 days.

6. Optional thickening step 2: drain the juice from the cherries into a saucepan and reduce the liquid by 1/2—Rose Levy Beranbaum’s tip for keeping the bottom crust from getting soggy.

7. Combine the cherries, the reduced liquid and 2 T. tapioca if following the optional thickening steps or 4 T. tapioca if skipping them (if you reduce the amount of liquid in the filling, you need less of the thickening agent), the extract, and nutmeg if using.

8. Preheat the oven to 400F.

9. Using a rolling pin or empty wine bottle or other heavy-ish cylindrical item, roll out one of the pastry discs on a lightly-floured piece of parchment, wax paper or second piece of plastic wrap with the piece of plastic wrap you chilled it in spread on top. For even rolling, always start with the rolling item in the middle of the pastry and roll directly away from you, and then turn the parchment or plastic wrap 90 degrees and repeat, turning the dough in a circle. It’s like you’re making a plus sign or rolling only on an x & y axis. Towards the end, you may want to do a few 45 degree turns to create a more even circle (rolling towards the diagonals).

10. Remove the plastic wrap, and center the pie dish, upside down, on the rolled out crust. Using the paper/plastic to help, flip it over so the crust is on top. Place in the refrigerator while you roll out the second disc of pastry

11. Repeat the rolling with the second disc. For a lattice-top, slice it into thin strips using a sharp knife or pizza cutter.

12. Pour the filling into the bottom crust. Dot with 2 T. butter, if desired (I always forget this step and have never felt like the finished pie was missing any richness, so consider it optional). Drape strips of crust over the top, parallel to each other.

13. Fold every other strip back halfway, and lay another strip of pastry perpendicular to the first strips.

14. Fold those strips back down and fold the strips that are now under the perpendicular strip back. Lay another pastry strip parallel to the perpendicular one. Repeat until all the strips are woven across the top of the pie.

15. Crimp the overhang from the bottom crust and the overhang from the strips, forming a fluted edge (or not—you probably do want to crimp the edges and remove the excess so it doesn’t burn, but there’s certainly no reason it has to be fluted).

16. Bake for 55-75 minutes. If the edges begin to brown too much, which they probably will, create a little foil shield for them. At about that point, I also like to sprinkle some cinnamon sugar on the crust, which will form a crunchy candy topping. It’s “done” when the lattice top is as brown as you want it to be.