Your kitchen is lightly dusted with flour, the bowls of ripe fruit are ready to be translated into filling, or maybe a pot of Meyer lemon curd or melted Valrhona chocolate stands on the stove. The fruit and curd and chocolate are all things that can go into the glorious pie you're making. But how much thought have you given to the crust itself?
Consider the landscape of that crust, built with just a few ingredients: flour and butter, sugar and salt. Because most of that is flour, that's where most of the crust's flavor comes from. Options go way beyond traditional white flour.
Not only whole wheat, which lends a rich nuttiness to your crust, but also rye, oat and buckwheat flours can add dimension to the pie. If you think of the difference those flours make for the breads you buy or bake, think of what they can do here. Pair rye with chocolate, oat with berries, a nutty whole wheat with ripe peaches -- or more chocolate. Whole grains are not only more nutritious than white flour, but they have amazing flavors that can highlight what's going into your filling.
Using whole-grain flours in pie crust means a little bit of experimentation, but mostly you can just substitute about a quarter of the all-purpose flour in your favorite recipe with the same quantity of whole-grain flour. Then increase the water a bit (the amount depends on a few variables: the weather, how freshly milled your flour is and how full of bran it is). Add enough liquid that the dough comes together but is still a bit shaggy, then chill and continue as you normally would.
Food on 01/18/2017