We haven’t mentioned crusts. I found the perfect pie crust recipe. Double recipe for a double crust. This guy researched like heck, and used some Japanese recipe to improve and make foolproof the typical American pie crust recipe. I use this now exclusively for my pies.
https://www.williams-sonoma.com/recipe/christopher-kimballs-no-shrink-pie-dough.html
Will have to try that. The last Chris Kimball pie crust recipe that interested me was the one that used vodka. He went into the chemistry of why replacing some of the liquid in the recipe with a little vodka made for a flakier crust. It was in either Cooks’ Illustrated, or ATK; but I never got around to trying it.