Cherry Pie

Ingredients
- WTF pie crust (please see my other recipes) - 3 cups fresh sweet cherries, pitted - 1 cup dried tart cherries - 3/4 cup sugar - splash vanilla - dash cinnamon - 2.5 tbsp corn starch - pinch salt - t tbsp butter, cut in small pieces - 1 egg yolk - 1 tbsp cream
Instructions
This bakes at 425 degrees farenheit for 40 minutes or until the pastry is deep shiny golden and gurgling molten cherry urges. Combine cherries, sugar, flavorings, corn starch and salt and let macerate for about an hour. Meanwhile, prepare the WTF crust, but be more agressive when making. After adding the liquid, gather into a ball. Then perform fraisage for more flaky layers: take a chunk of the dough ball and smear it against your work surface with the heel of your hand. Repeat for the rest of the dough and gather back into 2 balls, one slightly bigger than the other. Press into disks, wrap in plastic and chill for 20 minutes to rest. Roll out the larger ball to lay in a 9 inch pie pan. Fill with cherry mixture and all juices, scatter with small pieces of butter and chill while making the lattice top. Roll out the smaller ball into as nice a rectangle as you can manage and cut out 10 inch long strips to lay over the pie in some decorative manner. If you want to get really fancy, make a true basketweave and impress all your friends. Or you can fake it like I did and just slap the strips on top of each other. Mix the egg yolk and cream together and brush over the pastry. This pie shrinks a little upon baking. If shrinkage is an issue for you, let the assembled pie rest (covered with plastic wrap) in the refrigerator for at least as long as it takes your oven to get up to a true 425 degrees F, then bake. Also, it is helpful to heat the oven with a baking sheet inside on the middle rack. You can set the pie on it to catch any drips. It also ensures a non-soggy bottom crust. If the crust starts getting too brown before the fruit bubbles, cover the edges loosely with foil until done. I like this pie cold, straight from the refrigerator the day after baking.