PUMPKIN AND APPLE MINI PIES

We mix the warm water, psyllium bran, yeast and a teaspoon of sugar in a large bowl, cover it and leave it in a warm place for 20 minutes. I put it on the warm radiator. We mix the flour and the starch. You know I’m a big fan of millet flour, it behaves nicely in doughs, has some springiness and hydrates well, but it’s a bit bitter, and I should have compensated for that with too much sugar, so I combined it with rice flour, which has a neutral taste, but is drier and grittier, so I compensated for that with cornstarch as well. Enough with the theory, let’s get back to practice. After 20 minutes the yeast made bubbles, so we take the bowl, put a spoonful of flour and mix a little, put the rest of the sugar and the salt powder, add about 70 grams of the flour mixture, then put the oil and knead until everything is incorporated. Add another tablespoon of flour, form the dough into a ball, cover the bowl and put it back at warmth for 30 minutes. If you’ve read the ciabatta recipe, I’ll tell you that the technique is the same: stretch and fold. Place the dough on the surface dusted with the remaining flour and fold it several times, with a 10-minute break between foldings, during which time we let the dough rest covered with the bowl. The dough will rise each time during those 10 minutes. After the fourth folding, we divide the dough into 4 pieces, which we fold as well and leave for another 10 minutes. With the rolling pin, roll each ball into a circle with a diameter of about 15 cm. In the middle of each circle we put the sweet filling. I put a mixture of pumpkin and grated apples, tempered a little with sugar and cinnamon. I tried not to put too much syrup in the filling, because it would run and spoil the look. I left about 3 cm of the edge of the dough uncovered with filling, because I turned that edge over this one, as seen in the photo. While I was trying to make the pies look as presentable as possible, the oven was heating up to 200 degrees Celsius with the tray inside. I have found that it is better to heat the tray as well, because otherwise the pie or even the bread will not bake evenly, even if the oven is set both high and low. Brush each pie with water and then put them in the oven with a spatula, after placing a baking sheet, being careful not to burn your fingers. You leave it there for 25 minutes.

When I started making the pies, I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do: the classic pie with a sheet underneath and a sheet on top, a roll, or maybe with a sheet underneath, the filling and some kind of meringue on top. I decided to make them into individual pies on the last fold of dough, so I had plenty of apple and pumpkin filling left over, which I made into a delicious pudding. Will follow.