Bake a delicious blueberry pie from scratch in the Traeger or the oven. The crust is buttery and flaky and paired with a perfectly sweetened blueberry filling using a quick-set technique.
It’s Pi Day time! So why not bake a delicious blueberry pie from scratch!
I received a request for Blueberry Pie and had never baked one before. Since my Razzleberry Pie uses frozen berries, I swapped mixed berries for blueberries. The blueberry filling sets up perfectly with Cornaby’s E-Z Gel doing the heavy lifting. So don’t let this pie intimidate you. Bake a delicious blueberry pie from scratch with limited effort. Your craving for pie will be completely satisfied!
(This post is not sponsored by Cornaby’s E-Z Gel. I just love the product so much.)
The Blueberry Pie Crust
I am a huge fan of an all-butter crust. But I have found that an all-butter crust doesn’t bake as well in the Traeger. A little added shortening makes all the difference. An all-butter crust is also more complicated to make correctly. So, this pie crust recipe has become my go-to recipe. Best of all, I get compliments from it every time! My biggest pie crust critic, my dad, said my crust was even better than his mom’s—a huge compliment indeed. So don’t be afraid to bake this delicious blueberry pie from scratch.
Ingredients Needed for the Blueberry Pie Crust
- All-purpose flour
- Salt
- Unsalted butter
- Butter flavored shortening (or regular shortening)
- Ice water
The flour, salt, butter and shortening come together very quickly in a food processor. But you can use a pastry blender or two knives to blend the ingredients together until the big chunks of butter and shortening are broken up into pea-sized chunks or smaller. If using the food processor, you want to make sure the chunks are not clumping together again. That’s why pulsing is more effective than just running the food processor on full.
Once the flour mixture is in small chunks, pour it all into a large bowl and add ice cold water by Tablespoon. Ice cold water is a must. You are trying to keep the butter and shortening in your mixture cold so your crust will be flaky. The science behind the flaky texture is that as the butter and shortening melt in the oven, it leaves little pockets of air inside your baked crust—creating the flaky texture pie is known for. Use a spoon or spatula, instead of fingers, for mixing the water into the flour mixture.
Add water 1 Tablespoon at a time until the mixture starts to form a ball. You want error on the side of too little water. You do not want the pie dough to be sticky.
While trying not to overwork the pie dough, since your hands start to melt the butter and shortening, divide the ball of dough in half. Use your hands to form each ball of pie dough into a circular, disk that is 1” thick. Cover each disk with plastic wrap and put in refrigerator for 2 hours. The purpose of refrigerating the dough is to chill the butter and shortening again.
The Blueberry Pie Filling
Frozen blueberries can be found at Costco (yes—I am a Costco girl). There are even two choices: organic or not. Either one works perfectly! The best feature of this recipe is that you can use frozen berries and not pre-cook them before you fill your pie. Two huge time savers!
You can make your filling just before you are ready to assemble your pie. It takes about 5 minutes, so you can prepare it as soon as your crust has chilled. Measure your frozen blueberries according to your pie pan size—5 cups of frozen berries for a 9” pie pan and 6 cups of frozen berries for a 10” pie pan. Then, add the sugar and the Cornaby’s E-Z Gel. Mix it all together until all the berries are coated well. There may be a little bit of sugar and gel that isn’t mixed in. That’s ok. It will go into the pie as well.
Assemble the Blueberry Pie
Your crust is chilled. Your filling is mixed together. You have gathered a pie plate, a little flour, a rolling pin, and either parchment paper, plastic wrap or a silicon mat.
Tips and Tools
You may ask why you would need parchment paper, plastic wrap or a silicon mat? It’s my preferred way to roll out a pie crust because it’s less mess and so much easier to flip the crust onto the pie plate. When I roll out the crust on the kitchen counter, it’s really hard to move it to the pie plate in one piece. When I roll the crust out on something else, I can just move the pie plate next to the crust and then flip it over and on to the pie plate.
Even better, if I use parchment paper, plastic wrap, or a silicone mat on the top and bottom of the crust, and dust each with flour, when I roll out my crust, it hardly sticks to my rolling pin.
Here’s my favorite silicon mat for pies (since it has markings on it for how big to make the crust to fit on my pie plate) and it works for cut-out cookies, as well as anything you need to roll out on your countertop—like cinnamon rolls.
(The post is not sponsored by this product. It’s a product I use and really like.)
The Bottom Crust:
Once you have rolled out your bottom crust to ¼” thick and at least 1” bigger than your pie plate–2” bigger is even better, striving to make it a perfect circle, it’s ready to flip on to your pie plate. Center the crust as best you can over the pie plate. Then lift each edge of the crust, while you press the crust against the bottom and sides of the pie plate, until the crust hugs the entirety of the pie plate. Use a butter knife or sharp knife to cut away the excess crust from the top edge of the pie plate.
The Filling:
Add the filling to the bottom crust until it is heaping and you have added all the excess sugar and gel too. Keep the edges of the bottom pie crust clean from blueberries and sugar/gel so the top crust will adhere well.
The Top Crust:
Roll out the 2nd pie dough disk to form the top pie crust. Again, roll it to ¼” thick and 1-2” bigger than your pie plate, striving to make a perfect circle. When you flip the top crust on to the berries, try to center the crust before laying it down on the berries. Moving a crust on top of the berries is challenging, so centering ahead of time is best. (Another good reason for the parchment paper, plastic wrap, silicon mat.) Now, use your knife to cut excess away from the top crust—however, this time, leave ½-1” excess top crust around the entire pie pan, instead of trimming right to the edge of the pie pan.
Crimping the Edges:
After trimming, fold the excess part of the top crust under the trimmed part of the bottom crust. This will make a triple layer of pie crust along the edge of the pie pan all the way around. Using your two thumbs side-by-side on top of the crust and your pointer fingers under the pie pan rim—like pinching, press thumb prints into the triple layer of pie crust to crimp the layers together. Now, move your thumbs over, so one thumb is in the indent and the other is making a new indent. Press again. Continue to press/crimp the edges around the entire pie pan. Then use your hands to lift any crust that has fallen below the rim of the pie pan. Also, make sure the edge of the pie crust is not hanging over the edges of the pie pan.
Finishing the Top:
Use your sharp knife to cut 5-6 vents into the top crust, to allow for steam to escape while baking, and keep berry juice from breaking out of the crust in other places. However, fillings in pies do tend to drip over, so the best technique is to use a baking sheet covered with foil under your pie. Then you don’t have berry juice burning in your oven while the pie bakes!
Mix the egg wash and use a pastry brush to spread it over the entire top crust. Keep it from pooling into the indentations along the edge of the crust. After the top crust is covered with egg wash, liberally sprinkle coarse sugar on the top crust. Your pie is ready to bake.
Notes:
- Draping with Foil. The berries are frozen, so I cover the edges of the pie with tin foil and drape the top of the pie with tin foil for the first 25 minutes of baking. The easiest way to do this is cover the bottom of a baking sheet with tin foil that extends a little. Fold the excess tin foil up around the pie edges. Then, just drape the top of the pie with one piece of foil. This technique is unusual, but necessary because of the frozen berries. If you just start baking a pie with frozen berries at a high heat and not tented with foil, the crust will set its shape early. Then, when you cut into the finished pie, there will be an air pocket between the filling and the crust. By cooking this pie at 375 degrees F and draping it with foil for the first 25 minutes, the filling has a chance to defrost and begin cooking first. Then, the second half of baking, sets the pie crust at the correct filling level and browns the crust perfectly!
- Baking in the Traeger: If you are baking this pie in the Traeger, you will find that it doesn’t get as browned as you would like it. So, after baking the pie in the Traeger, I just put it in a 375 degrees F preheated oven for 8-10 minutes to brown just the way you like it.
Since most baking sheets can fit two 9” pies on it, you might as well bake two at the same time. See the matching Razzleberry Pie Recipe.
Enjoy Pi Day and bake this delicious blueberry pie from scratch!!
–Kim
Blueberry Pie
Ingredients
Crust
- 2 ½ cups (313g) AP Flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 6 Tablespoons (90g) unsalted butter, cubed and chilled
- 2/3 cup (130g) butter flavored shortening, chilled
- ½ cup (120ml) ice water
Berry Filling
- 5-6 cups frozen blueberries
- ½ cup sugar
- ¼ cup Cornaby’s E-Z Gel (no substitutions)
Egg Wash and Sugar Topping
- 1 egg
- ½ teaspoon water
- 1-2 Tablespoons Turbinado sugar or granulated sugar
Instructions
Crust
- Add flour and salt to food processor. Pulse a few times until mixed. (Can use pastry blender or two knives instead of food processor).
- Add half the butter by pressing the butter cubes into the flour to coat each cube. Pulse the food processor a few times.
- Add the remainder of the butter cubes by pressing the butter cubes into the flour again. Pulse the food processor a few times.
- Add the shortening in small clumps to the top of the flour.
- Pulse the food processor 10-12 times and/or until pea-sized or smaller crumbs—but NOT clumping together.
- Measure ½ cup water, then add ice cubes and stir around.
- Pour the flour/butter/shortening mixture into a large bowl. Add ice cold water 1 Tablespoon at a time, stirring with a spoon or spatula after each addition.
- Stop adding water when you reach 8 Tablespoons of water or when large clumps form. In dry weather, more water may be needed (up to 4 Tablespoons more). But for a flaky crust, don’t add more water than needed.
- Use hands to create a large clump/ball of pie dough. Divide in two. Form two round, flat disks that are each 1” thick. Cover both separately with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.
Berry Filling
- Add all ingredients into a medium-sized bowl.
- Stir and set aside.
Pie Assembly and Baking Instructions
- Preheat Traeger or conventional oven to 375° F.
- When the pie crust has chilled for 2 hours in the refrigerator and the berry filling has been mixed, cover the surface for rolling out your pie crust with a dusting of flour.
- Roll out pie crust disk until it is round and ¼” thick. Make sure the round pie crust is at least 1-2” wider diameter than your pie pan.
- Flip the pie crust onto the pie pan, centering it as best you can over the center of the pie pan.
- Lift the edges of the crust as you gently press the dough into the bottom and sides of the pie pan, until the crust hugs closely to the entire pie pan.
- Use a butter knife or sharp knife to cut away the pie crust hanging over the rim of the pie pan. Set aside the bottom crust/pie pan. Wrap left-over pie dough in plastic wrap and continue to chill it in the refrigerator (for use later if needed).
- Stir the filling again. Fill uncooked bottom crust with the berry mixture until heaping. Add all the sugar and gel granules as well. Be careful to keep the top rim (outside edge) of the pie crust clean from the berry mixture so the top pie crust will adhere properly.
- Cover surface for rolling out the pie crust with a dusting of flour again. Roll out the second pie crust disk until it is round and ¼” thick. Make sure the round pie crust is at least 1-2” wider diameter than your pie pan.
- Flip the top pie crust onto the berry filled pie pan, centering it as best you can over the center of the pie pan.
- Cut away excess pie crust so that ½-1” pie crust remains around entire edge.
- Tuck top pie crust UNDER the bottom pie crust rim/edge around entire edge of pie. (There will be three layers of pie crust.)
- Crimp all three layers of the crust together around entire edge of pie crust. (For an easy way to crimp, see details in the post.)
- Check for over-hang—pie crust underneath or hanging off the rim of the pie pan and press up and on top of pie plate rim.
- With a shape knife, cut 4-8 vent slits in the top of the pie crust.
- At this point, the pie can be frozen for up to 3 months. Cover well with plastic wrap and foil.
- Brush the top pie crust with egg wash (egg and water). Avoid pooling egg wash in the indentations.
- Immediately sprinkle with sugar before egg wash dries.
- Put the prepared pie on a baking sheet covered with foil. (I prefer covering the pan lengthwise and crosswise so the foil extends the edges 3-4”.)
- Cover the edges of the pie with the excess foil and drape an extra piece of foil on top of the pie. (The drape keeps the pie crust from stabilizing its shape until after the frozen berries have defrosted and deflated.)
- Bake pie with the foil drape for 25 minutes at 375° F.
- Remove the drape and continue baking for another 45-50 minutes or until browned and bubbly. (For Traeger, cook for another 25 minutes in the Traeger, then 8-15 minutes in a 375° F oven for browning.)
- Remove from oven and cool completely at room temperature. Resting overnight or for 2-3 hours will set the filling. Do not put in the fridge—as the filling will sink and pull away from the crust.
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