Corrine Tilton's French Apple Pie

We found ourselves stuck home today with a sick James, forced into our first official Jeremy Tilton family Thanksgiving. Our consolation is Jeremy's mom's apple pie. Everything will be ok as long as we have the apple pie. Since I've written the recipe down at least a half dozen times and still couldn't find it this morning, I thought I'd post it here for the next time we're in need of some perfect pie.

Corrine's French Apple Pie

1 unbaked pie shell

1. For deep 9 in pie dish: 5 large or 6 med/small Granny Smith apples, cored, peeled, and soaked in large bowl of cold water + 1 T salt. For glass pie dish, 5 small Grannies

2. Crumb topping: cut in 1/3 c butter to 2/3 c flour and ½ c sugar to fine crumbs

3. Squeeze excess water out of apples (or drain in strainer), then cut in halves. Combine with ½ c sugar + 1 t cinnamon and immediately stack densely, piece by piece, in pie shell. Do not add excess juices to pie.

4. Cover liberally with crumb topping. For heavy ceramic pie dish, bake at 350 for 20 min, then 325 for 30 + min, or until apples are tender when pricked, filling is bubbling, and crumb topping is lightly browned. For glass pie dish, bake at 400 for 40 min, rotating pie 1/2 way through.