I once wrote a magazine story about Georgia Haverty, who worked on her family’s apple farm in the early ‘80s and then returned to her land in the beautiful Virginia mountains in 2011 to start a pick-your-own operation. When I showed up to interview her, she was making crockpot apple butter and had a loaf of bread in the oven. Hmmm, I thought. This lady is going to help me up my apple pie game. So I asked for her pie recipe and she graciously sent it. I bake it now whenever I have good local apples on hand. There’s nothing super surprising in this recipe. Georgia says her secret is to use two or three different varieties of apples — none of them very sweet.
Ingredients
- 1 double pie crust
- 2 tsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp. lemon zest
- 6-7 cups apples, peeled and sliced
- 1/3 cup granulated sugar
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 2 Tbsp. unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1/4 tsp. fine sea salt
- 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
- 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425°F.
- Prepare pie crust. Refrigerate until needed.
- Squeeze lemon juice and zest into large bowl. Peel and slice apples, adding to them to the bowl one cup at a time. Mix with the lemon juice to prevent browning.
- Stir together sugars, flour and spices in a separate bowl. Pour flour mixture into the apple bowl. Mix until apples are well-coated.
- Place bottom crust into pie plate. Mound apple mixture on top. Cover with top crust. Crimp the crust’s edges. Cut small slits into center of the top crust to allow it to vent.
- Bake for 30 minutes. Cover the crust’s edges with a pie shield or aluminum foil. Bake for another 10-20 minutes more, until whole crust is golden and apple mixture is bubbling.
- Serve warm or room temperature.