As the warm smell of baking spices filled every corner of the house, my grandmother, Joan Nally Buchanan, ran around the kitchen with paper towels under her feet, cleaning up piles of spilled flour. “Well, I grew up during the Great Depression,” she said, brushing off my laughter. This explained all of her stupid but genius innovations. The scent grew stronger and I squirmed in anticipation as she pulled a crisp brown paper bag out of the oven. This was my favorite part of the her apple pie process, other than eating it. Carefully tearing the paper apart revealed a perfectly browned dough and a sweet, syrupy juice bubbling away. “Perfect!” she said with a big smile as we breathed in the rich aroma of her brown bag apple pie.
During the Great Depression in her small hometown of Thomaston, Georgia, her grandmother learned this recipe for brown bag apple pie from her mother. The recipe is almost 100 years old. The secret to its excellence is that an ordinary brown paper shopping bag traps all the moisture, creating the perfect conditions for the tender apples to nestle inside the golden, crispy skin.
As the years passed, I felt a sense of urgency to put her process down on paper. I wrote down and tried to remember every detail. “Come down and look at it like this,” she would say, bowing her head to the measuring cup. I remember we all laughed as we competed to see who could peel an apple the fastest. I remember the choreography that seemed stored in her muscle fibers, how she slipped the finished pie into a brown paper bag, folded the open end and tucked it underneath.
My grandmother is still with us, but she has Alzheimer’s disease. She barely remembers her life, the people who were there, or that her amazing cooking was once part of her identity. Earlier this year, my mom and I visited to soak up as much of her nutrition as possible, and we took over her kitchen and made pies. Even though she didn’t really know who I was or that the pie was hers, I couldn’t help but feel proud of myself as she took each bite of the pie. did. — Claire Spollen
Notes from the Food & Wine Test Kitchen
Depending on the size of your oven, you may need to move the rack to the third position from the bottom to prevent the bags from touching the heating element.
anticipate
The baked pie can be stored in an airtight container or covered at room temperature for up to 3 days.
