This past weekend we visited Rodale farm's organic apple festival, and we spent all of yesterday canning. We also have several peaches from making a batch of fruit ketchup. We still have about 1/4 a bushel of apples left, so I was considering making several fruit pies to freeze for the upcoming thanksgiving season.
Thus far, I have seen several recipes that caution AGAINST freezing, some that have tips about freezing (namely, blind bake the crust before freezing, do NOT bake the fruit, bake the pie frozen, just add an extra 20-25 minutes to the normal baking time).
Are there any other major concerns when making a pie specifically with the intention of freezing it? Should I add starch to prevent a liquidy mess? Should I try to drain the fruit first with a little salt to remove excess water?
Best Answer
We get a bushel of apples every year and make and freeze pies. We do a double crust without problem. We put a couple of tablespoons of flour on the bottom for the juices, but we do that for fresh pie as well.
We use tin and pyrex, whatever we can get our hands on.
The main concerns we have is the apples juicing too much in the pie, so we assemble and freeze them as fast as possible. (And we made 18 two weeks ago Saturday) so every time one is done we run it down to the freeze to freeze it immediately, we freeze them uncooked. Don't thaw the pie as again the fruit will have time to juice. We unwrap it (we wrap ours in plastic wrap and then foil to protect the foil from some of the acidic fruits) and put it in the cold oven and start cooking it as normal.
My family has frozen, apricot, apple, and blackberry.
Also when doing the pies en mass like this, we roll our open crusts for the holidays as well, since the mess is already made. These are for the pumpkin, banana, and chocolate pies. The crusts alone we do let thaw before cooking, as they cook so fast.