Peach pie, homemade crust

Colorado peaches. They're in season at the moment.

Pie shell made the ordinary pioneer plaines-woman way before your fancy time-saving electrical kitchen machinery made standard things like that seem impossible. Baked half way.

Sugar, a tiny amount of salt, cinnamon, within a few minutes causes the peaches to drain.  

The peach-liquid that drains is too wet for the pie crust so it is treated separately with as little cornstarch as possible added and heated separately only to thicken, here, 30 seconds in the microwave to boil. Now that it is thickened it will not ruin the crust.

The peaches will produce pectin as they heat and that will thicken by itself as it cools. The peach-liquid heated separately with cornstarch will gel solidly when it cools. So the trick, if there is a trick, is to avoid using too much cornstarch in fear the crust will become too soggy, setting too solidly, because not wet enough is as bad. This balance of wetness and dryness is the reason why peaches are chosen for cobbler, an upside down pie, where the wet peaches on bottom do not destroy the biscuits on top.

The crust is precooked partially, over half-way to a light tan color. The raw peaches with cooked thickened syrup added to the partially precooked pie shell. So a combination of cooked syrup, half cooked pie shell and raw peaches inserted into the oven.

Baked.

Painted with heated apricot preserves, as a sort of protective cellophane cover and to give it an attractive shine.