Double-Crusted Blueberry Pie w. Vanilla Bean Ice Cream (TWD)

We did some excellent outdoor entertaining for friends this weekend! The weather was picture perfect and the July 4th holiday resulted with a nice three day weekend. Most significant for us---after two years of extensive home remodeling (both the interior and front and back yards), we can finally say that we're finished (knock on wood) and for once can enjoy our home instead of working on it.

Along with some great barbeque courtesy of the hubby, I served this week's TWD recipe, double-crusted blueberry pie. This week's recipe was selected by Amy of South In Your Mouth.

I have not been an avid baker of pies, as I've never had great success with double crust pies. It's not the dough making that I'm challenged with; it's the baking part. More times than not, I end up with a nice golden top crust and a disappointing soggy bottom crust.

I'll be damned if this recipe gets the best of me, so I did some research before getting my hands dirty. Along with heeding Dorie Greenspan's great tips and instructions, I also applied some techniques from The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. The most significant shift in my technique was to bake the pie on the lowest rack in the oven, which is supposed to promote the browning of the bottom crust.

I did follow Dorie's recipe almost exactly as written. I used the smaller wild blueberries, and ended up using a combination of 1 pint fresh and 2 10oz bags frozen (a bit more than what the recipe calls for). I reduced the sugar to 2/3 C, doubled the amount of lemon juice/zest, and added a tbsn of chopped mint to the filling.

I was inspired by a picture in Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook, which showed star cutouts for the top crust (hers was a blueberry pie as well), so decided to follow her lead. After baking, the stars ended up looking like starfish, but at this point I was more fixated by what I couldn't see, which was the bottom crust.

The final results were EXCEPTIONAL! The crust was nicely browned, flaky and tender...and yes, to my relief this applied to the bottom crust as well!!! The filling had set perfectly and the mint helped punctuate the bright flavor of the sweet/tart blueberries.

The pie was served a la mode with my favorite homemade vanilla bean ice cream ---thank you once again David Lebovitz!!! To be totally decadent, I tweaked the recipe by adding an extra vanilla bean and substituting the whole milk with half & half - yes, this ice cream isn't for the faint of heart, but the end result is ice cream HEAVEN! Thanks to Dorie and David, we have another perfect summer dessert!

If you are interested in making this pie yourself (which I HIGHLY recommend), you can find the complete recipe at South In Your Mouth. To see the delicious pies that the Tuesdays With Dorie gang have been servin up, check out the blogroll.