Help Choose Our Next Cookbook Club Books (+ 3 Favorite Learnings So Far)

Our Cookbook Club has been baking from Kate McDermott’s Art of the Pie, and if you haven’t started yet, there’s still plenty of time to participate with it this month—head here to find out how.

Join Our Inaugural Community Cookbook Club!

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And we don’t want to divert you away from pie entirely, but in an effort to plan ahead—especially for library reserving and book purchasing and shipping purposes—we want you to take a moment to nominate the cookbooks we’ll all explore together in the coming months.

Simply add a comment below telling us what cookbook(s) you’d like to see the Club discuss, whether it’s a recent release or an old favorite. The deadline to vote is this Friday—February 17, 2017. Next week, we’ll announce the line-up of cookbooks for the next few months of the Club.

But for now, we have another two weeks focused on pie, and here are three of our favorite learnings that we’ve picked up from the Cookbook Club’s Facebook group so far:

1. Amy Chen picked up a great tip from a fellow pie lover in another Facebook group, Pie Nation (co-founded by Kate McDermott)—using a cocktail shaker to keep ice water cold:

   I have had my heart broken by pouring with a measuring glass of ice water into tablespoons and have the entire contents dump into my dough. Never again. Now my pie ice water is always shaken, not stirred.

2. Kate McDermott schooled us on how to avoid pies getting too brown and burned from too much sugar sprinkled on the pie when it’s initially put in the oven:

Thinking about what I could do to avoid this, I tried adding sugar towards the END of the bake time and have had great results. If you find that the sugar doesn't stick when the pie comes out of the oven, try brushing a second light coat of egg white wash on top while there are 10 (or up to 20) minutes bake time left, sprinkle the sugar on, and then finish baking.

3. Larry Noak shares that one of his most important takeaways from the book has been using a pastry cloth for rolling out the dough, calling it a “game changer”:

Honestly, I have been baking for about six years. Sourdoughs, cakes, pastries, but pie was ALWAYS my biggest challenge. Mostly because of my demand for perfection and nagging uncertainty. This book has changed it all for me. Not to seem like a braggart but, now, since The Art of The Pie, I feel like a ROCK STAR!

(And if you’re wondering about storage and cleaning, Larry folds it to fit in a zip-top bag, and washes the pastry cloth after five or six pies.)

Don't forget: Comment below telling us what cookbook(s) you’d like to see the Club discuss, whether it’s a recent release or an old favorite, by this Friday—February 17, 2017.