There are few of us with the access, time, and patience to use fresh pie cherries, most have to rely on frozen, canned, or jarred pie cherries. That being said, you can still make a pretty damn good cherry pie with those products. Frozen cherries come in several different brands, but I've never used them. Brands of pie cherries in jars are vanishingly rare in my experience, but I have recently run across prepared pie cherries by Chukar Cherries (chukar.com) which are tasty and easy to use (i.e. add directly to the unbaked pie shell. Unfortunately, they are a quite a bit more expensive than the canned. Here on the west coast of the USA, there is usually only one choice for canned pie cherries, the Red Tart Cherries from Oregon Fruit Products (oregonfruit.com). The following recipe is the classic one from Oregon Fruit Products and is designed for their product.
1 recipe basic pie dough, enough for 2 pie crusts
2 cans of Oregon Red Tart Cherries (be careful that you don't get their red sweet cherries by mistake.)
½ - ¾ cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
¼ teaspoon almond extract
1 tablespoon butter or margerine
The above ingredient list works fine for a standard shallow 9" pie pan, but if you are using a true deep-dish pie pan then you may want to increase everything but the dough by 50%. That will sometimes leave you with a bit extra filling, but you will often find you also have a bit of leftover dough that can be turned into one or two cherry tarts. Waste not, want not.
Adjust an oven rack to the lowest position, place a rimmed baking sheet on it, and heat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove the dough from the refrigerator (if refrigerated longer than 1 hour, let stand at room temperature until malleable).
Roll the dough on a lightly floured work surface or between 2 large sheets of parchment paper or plastic wrap to a 12-inch circle. Transfer the dough to a 9-inch pie pan by rolling the dough around the rolling pin and unrolling it over the pan. Working around the circumference of the pan, ease the dough into the pan corners by gently lifting the edge of the dough with one hand while pressing it into the pan bottom with the other hand. Leave any dough that overhangs the lip of the pie plate in place; refrigerate the dough-lined pie plate. Roll out the second piece of dough to a 12-inch circle and set aside.
Drain the cherries, reserving 1/2 the juice.
In a saucepan, stir the cherry juice into the combined mixture of the cornstarch and sugar. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened.
Remove from heat. Gently stir in cherries and almond extract.
Pour filling into the pie shell. Dot with butter or margerine.
Place the second piece of dough over the filling. Trim the edges of the top and bottom dough layers to ½ inch beyond the pan lip. Tuck this rim of dough underneath itself so that the folded edge is flush with the pan lip. Flute the edge or press with the tines of a fork to seal. Cut 4-6 slits in the dough top.
Place the pie on the baking sheet and bake 30-40 minutes or until the top crust browns and filling begins to bubble. If necessary, cover the edges with aluminum foil during the last 15 minutes to brevent over-browning.
Transfer the pie to a wire rack; cool to room temperature, at least 4 hours, to allow filling to thicken before slicing.