Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

It is pie season and I love to bake pies.  My friends like to receive them.  I've been baking pies almost every day.

 A little advanced preparation makes baking a pie very simple.  I take a day and make a lot of pie dough. I place it in jumbo sized zip lock bags and roll it out.

 I stack them and put them in the freezer.  When I am ready to make a pie, I remove two and place them in the fridge.  By the time I am done prepping the fruit, they are ready to use.

 When making strawberry/rhubarb pies, I like to add a bit of rhubarb sauce to the filling.  It helps to thicken it.

 I keep it in the refrigerator and add about a cup of it to the fruit.

 The filling consists of about 8 stalks of cubed rhubarb, 1 quart of strawberries quartered, 1/3 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of sugar, the juice of 1 lemon and 1 cup of rhubarb sauce.  If you don't want to add rhubarb sauce, add 1/4 cup more sugar.

 The crusts are a pate brisee so they are a bit sweet.  I like my pies to have a bit of a tart filling with a sweeter crust.  Plus, this type of crust holds up well to a wetter filling.  You can find the recipe by typing pate brisee into my search bar.  Using one of the dough disks, line a pie pan.

Heap in the filling.

 Cover it with another disk of dough and pinch the edges.

 I roll my edges in instead of crimping which usually holds the filling better.

 Brush the top with cream and sprinkle it with vanilla sugar. Bake at 375 degrees for about 1-1/2 hours until golden and the juice looks thick and bubbling.  The time depends on how deep your pie pan is and how true your oven temps are.

 Always bake your pies on cookie sheets.  Depending on how juicy your berries and rhubarb are, you can have pie flooding.  It just makes the crust tastier.  If you soak the sheet with hot water and Dawn, the filling comes right off.  Go bake a pie!