This little trick I do highly recommend. It was discovered a few years back after a friend gave me a container of apple pie filling she had leftover. Determined to not let it go to waste at first, it was soon forgotten about. About a year later while cleaning out the fridge the pie filling was rediscovered, followed by an investigative whiff. What a wonderful aroma! It was quickly baked into a pie and the fermented pies took flight.

The technique is not complicated. I’ve only done this with fruit pies so I recommend starting there. Make your filling as you usually would. Then pack it and leave it out on the counter to ferment. We made one recently that couldn’t have sat for longer than two weeks and I thought the flavor was excellent. I think the fermentation opens up a bouquet of floral aromas. The flavor was somewhat citrusy with a pleasant additional fermenty tang. A nice benefit is that the fermentation eats up some of the sugar in your pie recipe so it’ll be a tad less sweet.

Finally, don’t forget a good heap of vanilla ice cream to weave all the flavors together into a floating cloud of divine desserting. Enjoy!

Process

1. Make apple pie filling per your favorite recipe, spices and all, but be sure to slice the apples thinly. The goal is to get them to give off enough liquid and become pliable, so that they can be submerged in their sugary brine.
   2. Pack into a container with a lid to macerate overnight or for the day, just until the apples soften.
   3. Once the apples are soft enough, pack them beneath their brine just like with sauerkraut. Ferment at room temperature for 1-2 weeks or more. Perhaps you’d like to move them to the fridge and forget to really deepen their flavor.
   4. Bake as usual with your favorite pie crust recipe. 
   5. Enjoy the warm and tangy pie with a heap of vanilla ice cream!

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