Hi Everyone,

I’m new here and look forward to interacting with you all!  I have two questions that I couldn’t find answers for anywhere else in the forum.

Recently I saw a few recipes for cooking an apple pie in a brown paper bag.  I’ve never heard of this before.  What would be the advantages/disadvantages of doing this?  In some recipes, the instructions were to cut a hole in the top of the bag after the pie had baked about halfway, while in other recipes the bag remained closed for the entire baking time.  I’m wondering if using a bag might help with my next question.

Apple pie is one of my favorites, but I often have frustrating results.  I enjoy a deep dish pie.  I like to use a spiral peeler/cutter for the apples.  If I don’t precook the apples, I usually end up with a dry pie and uncooked apples.  To be more specific, the apples in the bottom of the pie will often cook while the ones in the top will not.  Even after the entire baking time, the apples don’t cook.  I follow instructions carefully and try to layer the apples evenly.  The spiral cutter doesn’t slice them thick.  I have had the same results with a variety of different apples.  I must be doing something wrong but I don’t know what.  If I used a brown bag, would it allow steaming throughout the entire pie?  Then again, though, shouldn’t the juice in the apples generate enough steam to cook them without the bag?  I always cut vent holes in the top crust.

What should I try to achieve better results?

Thanks in advance,
Penny

SHADOKAT;
  Good evening to you & welcome to the club. I cannot reply about the paper-bag technique as I never heard of that before. However, Apple pie is also my favorite pie. I do not ever have any problems with baking it. Being that you didn’t list any of the info pertaining to the preparation of the pie that your concerned about, I must speculate. If your pie isn’t fully baked I must assume the baking temperature is either too low or your oven is out of calibration.
  About the dryness…well all that takes is just use the juices from the apples that it generates in your preperation. Mix it in with the pie. Listen why don’t you just post exactly how you are doing this thing along with the baking temp & I believe I or WE MEMBERS can fix you right up on baking a proper apple pie. Till then my friend enjoy the rest of the holiday this evening.

  ~FRESHKID.

Good Housekeeping had a recipe in the 60s for a paper bag apple pie that is fabulous. Google paper bag apple pie. go to cooks.com. Recipe number 35 entitled “paper bag apple pie” is the same as the original. Now instead of a paper bag, use a turkey roasting bag because paper bags are made from re-cycled material and may cath fire in the oven. I recently made it and used spys (“spys for pies”). It was fabulous. Used a lard crust. Piled six large Spy apples that had been cut in chunks. Everyone raved. The top browned beautifully.

Go to goodhousekeeping.com/recipefinder and search for “apple pie in a bag”. It is the exact recipe.

Still puzzled by your results with your apple pie being done on the bottom but not cooked enough on the top. I agree, if you could tell us more about what temperature(s) you cook at, whether you put the pie on a pizza stone or preheated pan, how long you cook, how you decide when it is “done,” etc we might be able to help. Maybe you aren’t cooking long enough?