Quality control James martin #1

[mark111757 Profile]

Today there was a recipe for apple pie and unless I missed it there was no size given for the dish or tin to be used. The picture with the recipe made it look like a tartlette and that is just a guess.

What do you good folks think??

Thank you in advance.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

Need a location, link, or reference for the recipe

But James has a habit of giving quantities for the pies he made for his deli shop, so 10 or even 12 inch mounds as he is too lazy to scale them down to a domestic size, really annoys me

[Pepper Pig Profile]

On another BBC derived foodboard years ago a member reckoned she made all the pies for James’s deli.

[mark111757 Profile]

https://www.jamesmartinchef.co.uk/?s=Ap ... pe=recipes

[Suelle Profile Website]

That quantity of ingredients would make a huge pie - I think Stokey Sue is probably right about a 10 or 12" pie dish.

Sloppy to use an individual pie as an illustration, and that is the weirdest pastry recipe I've seen for a long time.

I'd just avoid such badly written recipes and find something with more detail.

[Earthmaiden Profile]

That's a huge amount of sugar in relation to the other ingredients too!

[Badger's Mate Profile]

It seems quite a lot of flour for a 12" dish! I'm thinking that halving the ingredients for the base alone is 280g flour, which is more than I'd use on a tart, but maybe within the sort of variation that occurs with recipes, perhaps. It's way too much for a 10" dish, surely!

Last week I was baking a JO pine nut tart that required (for a 12" dish) 225g flour - half a pound basically. I scaled it down for an 8" dish.

A friend told me a story of being served pizza in a pub. They had run out of a 12" pizza so he was offered two 6" ones instead.

This might be apocryphal, of course...

[Stokey Sue Profile]

There was that tv programme where chefs went round competing in local completions at fairs and shows, I remember the total disbelief of the two who entered open tarts in the apple tart competition, to discover that a top crust was expected

My own experience with friends and family from further north is that a sweet fruit plate pie is often known as a tart.

I have an 11inch flan/quiche dish, dates back to the 70s, I’ve found pastry made with 8oz flour lines it with enough spare for lattice strips but not a lid

[Badger's Mate Profile]

I have an 11inch flan/quiche dish, dates back to the 70s, I’ve found pastry made with 8oz flour lines it with enough spare for lattice strips but not a lid

That certainly makes sense. 560g of flour for a pie doesn't so much. That's a pound and a quarter.

[ZeroCook Profile]

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I looked at the recipe and thought hmmm, interesting. To my eye it's for pie or pies of indeterminate size or quantity - a master recipe for a restaurant, say, from which you would weigh out amounts for individual pies - eg like the one in the photo.

If you halve it, you get a more usual home recipe quantity. I thought the quantities seemed unusual as well and on further number crunching looks more like old recipe in lbs/oz ratios converted to metric.

Sweet Pie Pastry half quantity

110g unsalted butter chilled 4 oz
140g caster sugar  5 oz
280g strong flour 10 oz
7g baking powder 1 tsp
3g salt  .5 tsp
125g double cream  8tbs

I'd say the half quantity makes basically a 300g flour pastry amount - enough for one 9"/23cm or 10"/23cm pie.

It's a lot of sugar, as mentioned and a lot of fat - extra from the cream. A very rich sweet and buttery pastry.