Grandma's Plum Pie with Sour Cream Dough

Plum Pie

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So much meaning in just two 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.

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.

A mouthwatering plum pie on a sour cream and butter dough. The perfect treat for the whole family: a delicious plum pie.

Ingredients

1 large baking sheet

For the dough

  • All-purpose flour 6–7 cups (780–910 g)
  • Sour cream 2 cups (400 g)
  • Butter 200 g
  • Sugar ½ cup (90 g)
  • Eggs 4
  • Baking soda ½ tsp (3 g)
  • Salt ½ tsp (3 g)

For the filling

For the baking sheet and serving

  • Butter for greasing
  • Powdered sugar optional

Step-by-step recipe

Sour cream dough

  1. Sift the flour. Otherwise you may end up picking lumps, pebbles and wheat grains out of your pie. Besides, sifting makes the flour “fluffy.”

    Ripe plums.

    To 3/4 of the sifted flour, add the salt, baking soda, ½ cup of sugar (90 g) and the eggs. Mix thoroughly until completely smooth.

    To 3/4 of the sifted flour, add the salt, baking soda, 0.5 cup of sugar and the eggs.

  2. Add the softened butter to the flour and knead the dough.

    Adding softened butter to the flour.

    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.

    Adding sour cream and kneading the dough.

  3. Roll the dough into a ball, cover with a cloth and put it in a cool place for half an hour.

    Roll the dough into a ball, cover with a cloth and put it in a cool place.

Preparing the plums

  1. While the dough rests, wash the plums. Halve the plums and remove the pits.

    Halve the plums and remove the pits.

Assembling the pie

  1. 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.

    Grease the baking sheet with butter and lay the dough on it.

  2. Arrange the plum halves on the dough, close together, side by side. You can lay them skin side up or down, whichever you like.

    Arrange the plum halves on the dough.

    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.

    Sprinkle the plums fairly generously with sugar. Use as much as you like. But don't skip it entirely, or it will be sour.

  3. 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.

    Lay dough strips over the plums in a lattice.

Baking

  1. Brush the top with beaten egg. Bake in a wood-fired oven or a regular one 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.

Serving

  1. After baking, let the pie cool a little. Then you can dust it lightly with powdered sugar, but that’s optional.

    Plum pie

    This plum pie is delicious hot, warm and cold. And absolutely heavenly with milk, especially warm or fresh from the cow.

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Calories and macros

237 kcal

100 g

  • Protein4.7 g8% of kcal
  • Fat9.1 g35% of kcal
  • Carbs33 g57% of kcal

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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To Get It Right

There’s a lot of dough

There’s a lot of dough, it’s a pie after all, and the dough is like the sochniki, curd-filled pastries, from childhood. For a smaller pan, feel free to scale it down: readers halve it, and for a 25 cm round pan they use a quarter and roll it thin.

Fresh plums, in season

The tastiest pie is made with fresh, ripe blue plums, from midsummer, when they ripen on the trees. Before the season there simply are no good plums.

A neat lattice

A roller cutter makes cutting the strips easy. Very thin strips tear, so it’s better to make them wider, 1–2 cm.

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Questions and answers

How do you make a plum pie light and fluffy?

Don’t overload the dough with flour, and don’t roll the bottom sheet too thick. A sour cream dough with baking soda puffs up in the oven as long as it stays very soft.

Can you make plum pie with kefir?

You can swap the sour cream for kefir, but it’s thinner, so you’ll need more flour and the dough will be less tender. Go by the same feel: the dough doesn’t stick to your hands but stays soft.

Can you make a pie with apples and plums?

Yes. Readers bake this pie with apples too, and it’s also delicious with apricots and peaches. You can mix the fruit as well: plum halves with apple slices.

Is this a plum custard pie with a pour-over batter?

No. That kind of pie is made with a runny batter poured over the fruit. Here the dough is rolled out into a sheet and topped with a lattice of strips, so you get a half-closed pie.

Why is my plum pie raw in the middle?

Most often because the bottom sheet is too thick or the plums are very juicy. If the top is already golden but the dough under the plums isn’t done, cover the pie with foil and finish baking at a slightly lower temperature.

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