Recipe: Brown butter malted beer pie dough / Blackberry pie

After our great blackberry picking excursion the other day, I couldn't wait to make a pie.  We had actually missed the season last year while traveling, so I wanted to make it extra tasty for the wait.  I wanted to do a beer crust and we had a bottle of stout on hand - perfect.  Then I noticed the jar of Horlick's malt mix in the cupboard and knew it would go with the beer.  As I checked on the beer in the fridge, I saw some brown butter I had stashed away - it looked so lonely.  After some rough calculations, I came up with a plan of attack and got to it. 

The result is delicious - a nicely crisp and coloured crust full of flavour with no single element taking over - a great complement to the big flavour that the blackberries bring.  As you might guess, the raw dough is a bit darker than a regular pie crust, but it bakes up nice, colours evenly and looks about as nutritious as you might hope a pie to look.  I was unsure about how the dough was going to behave in the oven, so I waited until it was pretty much done to glaze it, and just went with a simple melted butter and granulated sugar (coarse sugar would stand out more visually, but I didn't have any on hand).  You could eggwash, but the crust doesn't really need the extra colour.

You will need:

For the crust:

114g / 4oz                   cold brown butter

114g / 4oz                   cold unsalted butter (plus more for the pan and glaze)

330g / 11.5oz (2C)      all purpose flour 

70g / 2.5oz (1/2C)       malt powder (Horlick's)

125ml / 1/2C               cold stout beer

5ml / 1tsp                    granulated sugar

pinch                           kosher salt

For the filling:

as desired                    blackberries

as needed                    sugar (how sweet are the berries?)

as needed                    flour

Method:

 - grate the butter and brown butter on a large tooth cheese grater,  then tuck in the freezer

 - mix the flour, malt powder, sugar and salt together

 - mix in the frozen grated butter with the dry

 - add the beer and mix until just combined (by hand is ok)

 - divide the dough into two and form two discs 

 - rest the dough in the fridge for half an hour

 - butter the pie plate and put in the fridge

 - wash and drain the blackberries (if you haven't already)

 - preheat the oven to 350F / 177C

 - take the dough out and roll the bottom crust

 - lay the crust in the pie plate and press in

 - toss the blackberries with sugar and flour, then fill the crust

 - roll out the top crust

 - cut some vent holes

 - lay the crust over the pie and pinch the edges of the top and bottom crust together

 - trim away any excess crust

 - place on the middle rack in the oven for 50 - 60 minutes - rotating as needed

- when the crust looks good and you can see the filling is bubbling, melt the butter

 - brush the pie with the butter and sprinkle with sugar

 - return to the oven for another 5 minutes

 - remove and cool on a rack

 - dig in