I was looking forward to making this, as I am intimidated by regular apple pies. When I put my pie in the oven, I soon saw a pool of melted butter around the crust edges. I used a rimless baking sheet and soon enough, the smoke alarm went off! A drippy burned butter mess on the bottom of the oven! Should the butter melt like that? I always though the cold butter in the crust is supposed to "steam" at that initial high temperature. I did have big pieces of butter in the crust though. I also wonder if my oven temp is off. Could that be the problem? This is the 3rd apple pie recipe I've made in the last few months and I have had this happen (melted butter pool, not so flaky crust). The resulting pie wasn't bad, but I suspect something was off. Ariana, I'm not sure what's causing this. First, though, bake on a baking sheet with a rim next time, OK? Just in case it happens again, you'll want to avoid the mess in the bottom of the oven. Are you using King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour? If not, it may be that the lower protein flour you're using simply can't absorb the amount of fat in the recipe. The other two times it happened, were you using different crust recipes? Are you using regular butter (not "light")? And you're using butter, not margarine, right? Try cutting the butter in more finely, so you don't see the big chunks. Readers, does anyone else have anything to offer here? PJH

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