It’s not as traditional as pumpkin pie, or as familiar as apple pie, but I’m going to go ahead and say it: pecan pie is the ideal Thanksgiving dessert. It has deep American roots. It has warm, caramel, nutty flavor. And while it’s fancy enough for a holiday spread, it’s also homey enough to serve any Thursday evening, all year round. Amy Emberling, co-managing partner of Zingerman’s Bakehouse, wrote in the Zingerman’s Bakehouse Cookbook, “This is my favorite Bakehouse pie, just because I enjoy it and also because it fits our mission perfectly—full flavored and traditional.”
Both the pie crust and the filling are made with real butter.
That might not sound that special, but the reality is that practically all bakeries making pies on any scale use shortening, not butter. There are two reasons for that. For starters, butter is more expensive, so using shortening cuts down on costs. Shortening is also a lot easier to work with. Butter has a fairly low melting point—around 95°F. Shortening, on the other hand, melts around 118°F. That means butter can melt in your hands, but shortening can’t, so it’s easier to make a dough with shortening. However, it also means that butter can melt in your mouth but shortening can’t. Pastries made with shortening will never have that delicate, melt in your mouth texture that you get from butter. The flavor of butter is also richer and more luscious than shortening, which typically has as about as much flavor as vegetable oil—which makes sense, because that’s basically what it’s made of. For our pies, we use Vermont Creamery’s Cultured Butter with 82% butterfat. The live cultures and the higher butterfat make for an extra flavorful, extra flaky crust.
We use a ton of really good pecans.
Unlike other pecan pies where there’s a paltry layer of pecans on top of a custardy filling, the Zingerman’s pie is so crammed full of pecans that there’s hardly room for the custard. We use huge whole pecans—the official name for the size is “mammoth halves.” They come from an association of orchards across the southern US that focuses on two varieties of pecans, Western Schley and Pawnee, both of which are known for their good flavor.
To make the filling, the primary sweetener we use is Muscovado brown sugar.
To make the filling, the primary sweetener we use is Muscovado brown sugar. Most brown sugar is actually bland white sugar with a little molasses added back in. Muscovado brown sugar, on the other hand, never had the molasses removed. It has incredible depth of flavor, with sweet notes like caramel and toffee as well as darker flavors that almost hint at smokiness. It gives a rich, complex, caramelly sweetness to the pecan pie.
Let’s chat about corn syrup for a minute. It gets a bad rap as the unhealthiest and most evil of the sweeteners. And while it’s true that industrially produced high fructose corn syrup isn’t the best for your health or the environment, plain old regular corn syrup has been part of the American culinary scene since at least the Civil War. These days, it’s a boon to candy makers and bakers because unlike other sweeteners, corn syrup doesn’t crystallize. That means it helps to create a soft, gooey texture. For that reason, practically every pecan pie out there is made with a bit of corn syrup—including ours.
All the little steps add up to make a seriously flavorful pie. When people try it they usually compare it to pecan pies they’ve had in the south—and ours has won more than a few converts.