Grandma's Plum Pie with Sour Cream Dough

Name: Grandma's Plum Pie with Sour Cream Dough
Prep time: 45 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Yield: 1
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: All-purpose flour 6-7 cups; Sugar 1 cup; Sour cream 2 cups; Eggs 4; Butter 200 g; Baking soda, salt 0.5 tsp each; Ripe blue plums 1.5 kg

So much meaning in just three words: “Grandma's pies.” An autumn apple pie, or a plum pie. It's childhood, memories, a summer orchard of juicy apples, and the mesmerizing sight of firewood burning in the oven.

For some reason, the brightest childhood memory is Grandma baking pies. The unforgettable smell of fresh baking that brings coziness, a sense of celebration and the anticipation of something special.

A cup of warm fresh milk and a still-warm plum pie. Remember?

Midsummer. We'd already had our fill of apples, the early white ones, sour cherries and sweet cherries. And on the tree by Grandma's house, the plums are almost ripe. The grandkids haven't stripped them yet for their own benefit. And so, the coming weekend, Grandma announces: we're baking pies. With plums and all sorts of other things. With apples, with jam…

But the pie with plums, fresh plums, is the tastiest and most eagerly awaited.

The grandkids, under the eye of the grown-ups, quickly and thoroughly pick the plums off the trees. The plums are sorted: some for baking, some for eating just like that, and the rest go into jars as compote and winter preserves, pickled plums.

And then, plum pie. Everyone's recipe is different, and they don't even resemble each other from one cook to the next. This plum pie comes straight from my childhood.

Strictly speaking, a pie is a baked dish of dough with a filling. There are countless pie recipes. What seems like a trivial variation in the recipe, and you already have a completely different dish.

Ingredients

1 large baking sheet

All-purpose flour 6-7 cups
Sugar 1 cup
Sour cream 2 cups
Eggs 4
Butter 200 g
Baking soda, salt 0.5 tsp each
Ripe blue plums 1.5 kg

Step-by-step recipe

Sift the flour. Otherwise you may end up picking lumps, pebbles and wheat grains out of your pie. Besides, sifting makes the flour “fluffy.”
To 3/4 of the sifted flour, add the salt, baking soda, 0.5 cup of sugar and the eggs. Mix thoroughly until completely smooth.
Add the softened butter to the flour and knead the dough.
Add the sour cream and knead the dough. It's best to do this on a floured work surface. While kneading, add the rest of the flour until the dough stops sticking to your hands and is very soft and slightly elastic. You may need to add even more flour.
Roll the dough into a ball, cover with a cloth and put it in a cool place for half an hour.
While the dough rests, wash the plums. Halve them and remove the pits.
After half an hour, take the dough out of the fridge and divide it into two parts.
Roll one part into a sheet the size of the baking sheet, but not too thick. The dough should be 15-20 mm thick.
Grease the baking sheet with butter and lay the dough on it. Gently even it out with your hands.
Arrange the plum halves on the dough, close together, side by side. You can lay them skin side up or down, whichever you like.
Sprinkle the plums fairly generously with sugar. Use as much sugar as you like. But don't skip it entirely, or the pie will be sour.
Roll the second part of the dough into a sheet 0.5-1 cm thick and cut it into narrow strips, 1-2 cm wide. Or cut it with a lattice roller cutter to make a net.
Lay the dough strips over the plums in a lattice. Or stretch the dough net over the whole baking sheet. You should get a half-closed pie. Be sure to make a dough rim around the edges or fold the edge over to thicken it.
Brush the top with beaten egg. Now you can bake it, in a wood-fired oven or a regular one. Bake for 40-60 minutes at 200-210°C. The plum pie should turn golden; be sure to keep an eye on it so it doesn't burn.
After baking, let the pie cool a little. Then you can dust it lightly with powdered sugar, but that's optional.
This plum pie is delicious hot, warm and cold. And absolutely heavenly with milk, especially warm or fresh from the cow.