If you're the kind of person who reads Home Plate, odds are you're the kind of person who's on the Williams-Sonoma mailing list. In case you're not, Williams-Sonoma is a catalogue for cooks. Back in the day (when I got on their mailing list), it was a good place to pick up 2 dozen white cloth napkins at a reasonable price, or to locate a decent chef's knife.

Alas, the Williams-Sonoma demographic seems to have changed from serious cooks to the kind of people who make nine zillion dollars a year and like expensive gadgets and pricey housewares. Ready for a new stock-pot? Here you can find one made of hammered copper for only $349.00. Asking Santa for an espresso maker? Why not the Jura-Capresso Impressa J5 at just $1,995.00 (marked down from $2,700.00!)?

Still, I've always enjoyed paging through W-S, that is until the November catalogue arrived in my mailbox. On page 37 I discovered a lovely shot of an apple pie, and beside it, for sale, the ingredients with which to make it - "Perfect Apple Pie Filling" and "Perfect Pie Crust Mix." Together, they make one smallish 8-inch apple pie, at a cost, before shipping and handling, of $26.50.

$26.50?

"Just add butter and water for a flaky, tender crust," the copy beneath the Perfect Piecrust Mix crows. Excuse me, Williams-Sonoma, but the expensive part of pie crust is the butter. Okay, on the website, they say the mix also has buttermilk (powdered, I presume) in it, and a bit of vanilla, and I'm guessing there's a wee bit of salt in there. But basically, they're asking people to pay $10.00 for flour! The apple pie filling is just as bad. $16.50 for 29 ounces of apples cooked in cider. Yikes.

Making your own pie at home is easy. And inexpensive. And way, way, way more delicious than anything you can buy from a store. Below you'll find my favorite recipe for pie dough. I'm a believer in butter only in dough, though some folks like to use part lard or shortening to make it flakier. For me, it's all in the superior flavor. Besides, if you make the dough carefully, it will be plenty flaky. There are a couple of important points to keep in mind if you want luscious, brittle, crackly pastry.

First, flour contains proteins that are activated by moisture and kneading to become stretchy and chewy. This is great in bread, but terrible in pie. Pastry flours are lower in proteins than regular flour and make exceptionally tender cakes and pies. The truth is though, you don't have to go out of your way to buy pastry flour. Handle the dough as little as possible and use as little moisture as possible and it won't get tough. I highly recommend using King Arthur unbleached white flour, not just because it is an excellent product, but because it's milled not so far away in Vermont. If you want to use a combination of white and whole wheat, use King Arthur white wheat flour, which is slightly lower in proteins than the regular whole wheat.

The second thing to keep in mind is that the flakiness is caused by thin layers of butter being trapped between layers of flour and water as you roll the dough. As the dough cooks, the water in the butter turns to steam; this forces the layers apart, resulting in a light, delicate crust that shatters under your fork. For this to happen, you need to cut the butter into the flour just enough, being sure to leave some pea-sized and larger chunks of butter in the mixture.

Luckily, the factory farms out west haven't managed to wipe out every last dairy in New England, so it's still easy to find good butter that's been made (relatively) locally. I recommend Cabot Creamery Unsalted, which is made in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont by a dairy farmers' cooperative. With oil prices flirting with $90 a barrel, Vermont butter can be a lot cheaper than mid-western butter - last week at my favorite grocery store it was a full dollar less per pound.

As for the apple filling - you don't have to spend a lot of money buying fancy, perfect apples for this. This is New Hampshire, after all. I bet you drive by a dozen untended, lonely apple trees every day - maybe you have some in your own back yard. Stop and pick one and give it a taste. It may look gnarly and worm-ridden on the outside, but it may just be delicious on the inside. These are great for apple pie, and are likely to be organic to boot. Also, I've found mixing up varieties is the best way to get a wonderfully complex flavor in your simple apple pie, so pick from a number of different kinds of trees if you can.

Start practicing now and by the holidays you will be turning the out the most delicious apple pie ever. Bring a couple of these babies along to Thanksgiving at your mom's and maybe, just maybe, your relatives will decide that you didn't turn out so bad after all.

Pie Dough

Makes enough for 2 double crust pies, four single crust pies, 16 turnovers or 20 open-faced tartlets.

1 pound cold, unsalted butter (if you only have salted butter, that's okay, but leave out the salt in this recipe)

5Î cups unbleached white flour (you can substitute up to Î whole wheat flour for some of the white)

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