I use King Arthur's "Best Pie Crust Recipe" that I cut from the bag decades ago. I tried to find it on line and it looks like they use a slightly different recipe now. From memory, the old recipe is:
2 cups King Arthur flour (and yes I suppose it will work with any flour but I only use KA)
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup of shortening
1/3 cup of cold unsalted butter cut into small pieces
5 tablespoons ice water (as needed)
The recipe uses both Shortening and butter. Their explanation: Shortening makes a pie crust tender, butter makes it flaky. The key to this recipe is cutting the fats into the flour in two steps. First cut in the shortening until the mixture resembles corn meal, then cut in the butter until you have about pea size pieces. I use a pastry cutter.
They also call for adding a teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice to the ice water. Again they explain that the acidity of the vinegar or lemon juice helps to develop the gluten in the flour also making the crust more tender. You then must refrigerate the dough for an hour or half hour in the freezer.
I do not roll out between paper. I flour my surface and my rolling pin and I add more flour as needed to prevent sticking. This crust never fails me and is good in both fruit and meat pies. It is always flaky and tender.
The recipe is enough for a single deep dish crust or a lattice top shallow crust. I tend to double it for my apple pie which I make in a super deep stoneware pie dish and do a full top (as opposed to lattice). For a standard 8" double crust pie (not deep dish) I make 1 1/2 times the recipe.
Last edited by feline fanatic; 12-14-2017 at 06:31 AM.