Whole Wheat Apple Pie

I've long had an interest in making a whole wheat (w/w) pie crust.  I definitely prefer w/wt bread, and have made w/w brownies, cake, and other things.  Pie crust has been a challenge, however.

My latest attempt, version 3.0, didn't use 100% w/w.  I used a 50/50 mix with unbleached white flour as the other form.  The basic recipe is a cup of flour, 1/4 cup oil, lard, butter, or shortening, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 cup of water.  The standard directions for making a flaky crust are to use butter or lard and cold water, keeping the fat as solid as possible.

I ditched that and used sunflower oil.  I've done w/w "crusts" in which I've just mixed up the above ingredients without the water, made a friable, loose mix without much cohesion, and poured it into the greased pie pan that way, then patted it roughly into shape.  That obviously only works for a bottom crust, but can do a fairly decent job for a pie that normally only has a bottom crust, like pecan, pumpkin, or sweet potato.

For version 3.0, I went ahead and rolled it out with w/w flour-covered bottom and top layers of waxed paper.  In the dish, before the top crust, it looked like what's shown at right.  As you can see, my edges weren't that smooth.  My rolled-out crusts look more like an amoeba than a smooth-edged disk.  However, I more or less got something I could use.

The finished product was not that good (and as you can see below, definitely not ready for competition in the nearest county fair).  W/w flour is denser than white; I would say I ended up more with something like a stuffed-crust pizza (that happened to have cinnamon and apple slices as the filling) than a pie.  While it wasn't all that great, it was still usable.  I will probably lighten up on the w/w content next time.  I gave a slice to a friend at work, who thought it was fine.

This was not made with the Striped June apples.  I canned the filling last fall, following the recipe on the NCHFP site.  I made it sugar free, using Whey Low in place of sugar. It was mostly GoldRush and Stayman apples, with a few Arkansas Blacks and maybe a Yates or two thrown in.   That's a subject for another day.