Dough:

Roll out the dough and ease it into a 9-inch pie pan. Trim, roll, and crimp edges, and freeze. Preheat oven to 425.

Filling:

In a saucepan, combine the cream and milk. Slice open the vanilla bean and scrape out its seeds with the tip of a paring knife. Add the seeds and the pod to the pan. Whisk to break up clumps of vanilla bean seeds.

Heat the mixture over medium heat just until it begins to steam. Take it off the heat, cover pan and let steep 30 minutes.

While the milk mixture is steeping, whisk the egg yolks, whole egg, 6 Tbsp. of the sugar and the 1/8 tsp. of salt together in a bowl. Set aside.

When the oven is preheated, line the pie shell with parchment or a large coffeemaker filter and add a couple of handfuls of dry beans. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes.

Remove the parchment and beans and bake for another 5-7 minutes. Take the pie shell out of the oven. Reduce heat to 300.

When the milk mixture has steeped for 30 minutes, whisk the sugar-egg mixture into it.

Slide out the oven rack and place the baked pie shell on the front edge of it. Carefully pour the custard filling into the pie shell, slide the rack back into place and gently push the pie to the center of the rack.

Bake 45-50 minutes, until the filling jiggles slightly but is not liquidy. Let cool to room temperature, then chill.

When ready to serve, sprinkle the remaining 2 Tbsp. of sugar over the pie filling. With a kitchen torch, caramelize the sugar, moving the flame tip back and forth slowly over the surface of the filling and taking care to avoid the pastry.

Orange blossom syrup (optional):

Bring sugar and water gradually to a boil in saucepan, swirling pan to help dissolve the sugar, but not stirring.

Once it boils, add orange juice and zest. Turn down the heat.

Simmer 10-15 minutes, until syrup coats the back of a spoon. Stir in the orange flower water. Cool.