Homemade Blueberry Pie with Fresh or Frozen Blueberries

This Homemade Blueberry Pie is the perfect combination of sweet and tart. The filling has a concentrated, bright fruit flavor that holds its shape when sliced. 

Even better, this recipe works well with fresh or frozen blueberries, so you can make it any time of the year. 

This double crust pie uses my favorite Foolproof Pie Crust because it's flaky, tender, and well... foolproof. Covering the top crust with a light dusting of sugar creates a delicious sweet crunch to every bite.

The Pleasure of Baking a Really Great Pie

Years ago, I read something in a newspaper article that has stayed with me ever since:

"When you bake a pie, you are in the kitchen in the company of ghosts." - In the South, Cake or Pie for Dessert? (NY Times)

Instantly, the many pies of my childhood came to mind, most of them baked by my Mom and Grandma. Fresh Cherry Pie, Strawberry Rhubarb, Apple Pie, and Chocolate Cream Pie are the ones I remember so clearly I can practically taste them.

I think this points to one of the many reasons why I love to bake. Baking is a uniquely personal way of connecting us to our past in a tangible way.

When we carve out a few precious hours to stand in the kitchen and bake these pies, we are indeed in the company of ghosts. It's comforting and real, and connects our past to our present with precious solidity.

Baking a blueberry pie is an opportunity to remember the pies of my past and the beautiful people who baked them. And, it gives me something to pass on to my own children so they can do the same.

How to Bake a Really Good Blueberry Pie

When I set about creating this recipe, I had three goals:

1. I wanted the blueberry filling to have a concentrated, bright fruit flavor with a delicious balance of sweet and tart
2. I wanted it to be easy to slice and serve
3. I wanted the recipe to work equally well with fresh and frozen blueberries

After baking pie after pie (I know, life is rough around here), this recipe is the end result. 

The Best Blueberry Pie Filling

Every kind of fruit pie filling needs something to thicken up up all that delicious fruit juice. The most popular thickeners include cornstarch, flour, and tapioca. All three are starches with a similar thickening power but also come with different advantages and disadvantages.

• Cornstarch can make fruit pie filling cloudy and give it a slightly chalky taste
• Tapioca creates a blueberry filling that is bright and clear, but can also give it a gluey consistency
• Flour is a thickener I generally stay away from completely when making fruit pies because it tends to make the filling cloudy and pasty, and gives it a floury flavor

The solution, is to use BOTH cornstarch and tapioca. Combining small amount of each delivers the same thickening power as using only one or the other. But because there's a smaller amount of each, we get all of their advantages without the disadvantages. The result is a blueberry pie filling that's glossy, luxuriously silky, and holds its shape when sliced.

How to Thicken Blueberry Pie Filling:

Before adding the tapioca and cornstarch, it's important to get the blueberries to release some of their juice so you have something to thicken! There are several ways to do this...

In my favorite Mixed Berry and Plum Pie, I like to let the juice drain from the berries, then thicken it separately before adding the fruit back in. This method helps to keep super delicate berries like raspberries somewhat intact through the baking process.

With blueberry pie, I prefer to do something slightly different:

• Cook half of the blueberries, breaking some of them up to create a super flavorful, concentrated blueberry syrup.
• Then add the cornstarch, tapioca, and the rest of the whole, fresh blueberries.
• This allows the tapioca and cornstarch to thicken all that delicious syrup, suspending the remaining whole blueberries in sliceable pieces of pie that aren't runny.

The end result is a mixture of rich, thick blueberry filling peppered throughout with whole blueberries as opposed to a fruit filling that runs all over the place the second you slice it.

How to Make a Flaky, Sugary Double Pie Crust

This recipe calls for my tried-and-true favorite pie crust, appropriately named Fool Proof Pie Crust. It's the crust I've been making for over 2 decades and it is, truly, fool proof thanks to two "secret" ingredients: vinegar and an egg.

Vinegar interferes with the formation of gluten in flour, which tenderizes the dough. In most pie crust recipes, you must take extreme care to not overwork the dough so that you don't activate the gluten in the flour and create a tough dough. In Fool Proof Pie Crust, the vinegar does a great job of guarding against gluten development so that you get a super tender and flaky crust every single time.

The egg in Fool Proof Pie Crust makes the dough more pliable and easy to roll out. The dough is quite elastic and rarely breaks, and when it does, it's super easy to stretch and press the dough as needed to cover the inside of a pie plate or the top of a pie.

That said, if you have a favorite pie crust recipe, please use that. Pie crust is often one of those things we were talking about earlier - a tangible connection to the past. 

Regardless of what pie crust you use, giving the top a sprinkle of sugar is a must. That gorgeous sugary top not only looks pretty, it adds a lovely sweet crunch to every single bite.

Homemade Blueberry Pie FAQs:

Q: Should I thaw frozen blueberries before baking this pie?

A: There is no need to thaw frozen blueberries before baking this pie. Frozen blueberries will thaw perfectly well as the pie filling cooks, so there is no need to add the extra step of thawing the berries in advance.

Q: What's the difference between tapioca flour and tapioca pearls?

A: Tapioca flour/ starch is essentially the same thing as quick-cooking tapioca pearls. The only difference is in their presentation. In this recipe, if using tapioca pearls, grind them first in a food processor (or spice or coffee grinder). The resulting powder is essentially the same thing as tapioca flour. So, use which ever you prefer.

Q: Can I make a lattice crust for this pie?

A: Absolutely! This pie will bake up just as well under a rolled crust, as pictured here, or a lattice crust. It's completely up to you. If you've never made a lattice top crust but want to give it a try, there are step-by-step photos in the post for Fresh Peach Pie that will show you how!

If you give this recipe a try, let me know! Scroll down to rate it and leave a comment for me, or take a picture and tag it @ofbatteranddough on Instagram.

Happy baking!

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