United States of Pie

April 2, 2012
This colorful, varied collection by a blogger, recipe developer, and food writer may well be the definitive resource on the all-American pie. Culled from farmwife cookbooks, bakeshops, church booklets, and newspapers, the recipes are categorized by region, with chapters for the Northeast, South, Midwest, and West and all of their classics: shoefly, Maine blueberry, Key lime, and strawberry-rhubarb, to name a few. These are interspersed with Kane’s updated versions of unusual, exotic concoctions such as Chipmunk Pie (stuffed with an apple and nut filling), green tomato pie, and burnt sugar meringue pie. Acknow-ledging that many home bakers are intimidated by the dough, Kane (Cooking and Screaming) covers the trickiest part of the process with step-by-step tips on crust making (sift or whisk dry ingredients; cut in fats by hand) and a host of foundational recipes, including rich and buttery cornmeal and leaf lard pie doughs. For the new baker there’s plenty of guidance on blind baking and crust fluting. Masters of the craft will be lured in by new challenges—rendering one’s own lard, for example. In all, this is a sweet and helpful guide. Agent: Alia Habib.

May 15, 2012

Working with historic sources like cookbooks from Yale's Sterling Memorial Library, Kane (Cooking and Screaming: Finding My Own Recipe for Recovery) compiled this collection of pies from the Northeast, South, Midwest, and West (e.g., Concord Grape, Southern Peach, Browned Butter Butterscotch Meringue, and Avocado). There are no photographs, so Kane relies on descriptive language to communicate the finer points of pie technique. VERDICT Compared to such classic primers as Ken Haedrich's Pie and Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Pie and Pastry Bible, this book is shorter and more focused on history. Recommended for frequent pie bakers interested in new flavors and regional specialties.

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