I have done chicken pot pie in a casserole before. Since otherwise I think chicken pot pie belongs in individual pie dishes, that's not a problem for me. However, I'm not so sure I'm ready to do fruit pies that way, and I note that there is no advice on sizing the recipe for different kinds of dishes.
I do have a Blueberry Pie Bar recipe from KAF's last incarnation of The Baking Sheet, and I use that when I have a crowd. It would probably work for apple pie as well.
My personal opinion, as long as it still tastes like pie, it's pie, regardless of the shape.
However, at some point a pie made in a casserole dish tends to be a crumble, buckle or cobbler, not because of the shape but because of the type of and placement of crust, and that affects the taste. Now, I'm all up for a good peach cobbler, apple crumble or blueberry buckle, but the taste and mouth feel is different.
I just love eating my way to the crust end of a piece of pie. That would not occur with a center piece of a casserole pie.
A slab pie strikes me as not as thick as the one in the picture with the article. A slab pie would include a greater proportion of crust to filling than the one baked in a deeper casserole dish. I could see a slab pie baked in a rectangular tart pan or a pizza pan.
This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by BakerAunt.