Dad's Apple Pie
Again, as I have for many years, I take pride in sharing my perennial Thanksgiving diary entry. I like introducing you to my Dad—and of course, I wish you all a happy and restful holiday.
It’s been tradition the last few years, on the day before Thanksgiving, to help a friend of mine make apple pies for the holiday. The physical and manual act of rolling out the pastry – or pâte brisée, as my friend calls it (she grew up speaking French) – is especially rewarding and releases my brain from a lot of thinking and processing.
Always at these moments, when I am completing that apparently impossible act of stretching the uncooked dough into a shape expansive enough for those nine-inch pie plates, I think of my dad, Charlie. He was a master baker. Apprenticed to the local bakery, Uptons, at the age of 15, his marriage certificate states he was a “journeyman baker.” He was a quiet, intelligent man, who worked hard from the early hours of the morning baking bread and making pastries – nothing fancy, just that good wholesome stuff that is the “staff of life.”
My dad never drove a car; he rode a bike. For several years he borrowed my bike, and I remember the flour ingrained on my saddle and carrier bag after the days it spent in the bakery while he did his work. I always remember his black leather shoes, caked in flour, sitting in the back entryway to our house.
He had warm hands – great with the dough for bread, but not so good with pastry, which needs colder temperatures. Even after he quit work because he suffered a stoke that paralyzed him on one side, my Dad could make better bread with one hand than most people I know. One of my prized possessions is a scrap of a letter he wrote to me containing his recipe for pastry for mince pies at Christmas – yes, I have followed it with assiduous care, but never have I made the mouth-watering pastry that Dad made.
So once again, this year, as I roll the dough and crimp the edges of the pie, I will have the chance to be in touch with my Dad for a bit. And once again, for a good couple of hours, I will get completely “out of my head” and into a lovely place in my heart. I trust that you too may find some peace and solace as you take a little time out of your usual routines.
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