Perfect Pie Crust
 

It's that time of year for making pies, so I thought that I'd post my favorite pie crust recipe. It's very light and flaky. It was passed down to me by my grandmother and I've never found a better recipe. It's supposed to make a double crust, but I think that pie pans were smaller then. I usually double the recipe and then have leftovers for a morning tart, or turnovers.

2 Cups all purpose white flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 Cup Crisco Vegetable shortening
4-6 Tablespoons ice water

Sift the flour with salt in a large bowl. Measure the shortening using a large measuring cup filled with one cup of water. Add the shortening to the measuring cup until the water reaches the 1 3/4 mark. (Make sure that the shortening is completely submerged in the water.) Remove the shortening from the water and to the bowl. Cut the shortening into the flour using two knives, one in each hand, cutting them against each other like scissors. You can also use a pastry cutter, but whatever you do, DON'T use a food processor for this step. Cut the dough mixture until it is made up of mostly, very, small pieces. A few pea-sized pieces are OK. Add the ice water to the bowl, one tablespoon at a time, while tossing the dough with the knives. Stop adding water when the dough just barely holds its shape. Don't overwork the dough. The dough will still look pretty crumbly. (Not like those stiff slabs of dough you see on the TV cooking shows.) Too much water will make the dough tough, so be careful with this part.

Dump the dough out on to a large piece of plastic wrap. Wrap it up tightly are refrigerate for at least an hour. When you are ready to roll it out, lay out a piece of parchment paper, or plastic wrap on your rolling surface and dust it with flour. Have another piece of paper, or wrap ready to place on top of the dough. Place half the dough on the paper, dust with a little more flour and put the other piece of paper on top of the dough. (Put the other half of the dough back in the refrigerator to keep chilled.) Roll out the dough to desired thickness, using a light touch. Again, you want to be careful not to overwork the dough. The should be somewhat delicate, fragile and probably be a little difficult to work with, but that's OK. Carefully remove the top piece of paper and flip the dough into a pie pan. Remove the bottom piece of paper from the dough. Fill with whatever filling you're using. Repeat the roll out steps for the top crust. You don't have to brush the top with anything, but my grandmother always brushed hers with a little milk and sprinked it with sugar.

Questions or other tips welcome.

~ C

That seems like a great recipe. I'm a pastry cutter girl myself vs the double knives. Chilling the dough, I think, is probably the most important part of the recipe. Thanks for this.

This is my favorite method, too, though lately I've been replacing part of the shortening with butter. I also use organic shortening.

My "go to" recipe is quite similar but I use a 1 to 3 ratio of shortening to flour.

Have you ever heard of using vodka instead of water? It is supposed to make the crust very tender and flaky.
Crisco is hard to beat, but I don't use it anymore; butter for me. More difficult to work with, though. My pie crusts usually end up looking "rustic" lol.

This is my mom's recipe that I always use, too, but I don't roll the dough out between papers, just on the counter or table. I flip it over once or twice until it's big enough, then roll it up onto the rolling pin to unroll it over the pie pan. If you handle the dough gingerly, and use ice water and refrigerated crisco, you don't even need to chill the dough before rolling it out. It'll still be flaky. My crisco stays in either the refrigerator or freezer all the time.

Vodka? Interesting. I wonder what it does, chemically, to the dough.

~ C

I saw this on american test kitchen, I think I remember them saying it evaporates faster than water making the pie crust flakier.

Would you believe I photocopied this recipe with pictures in the early 1970"s and it is still in my recipe box? Back from my Home Ec Days in middle school. That is what a winner I thought this recipe and those exact instructions were. Still use it to this day.... Thanks for the memory.....

There is an organic shortening that is very much like Crisco. I have been toying with the idea of using lard, but it sounds so gross.

Your recipe sounds exactly like mine. I've made it for decades. Mine came from the Betty Crocker cookbook.

That sounds exactly like my mom's recipe. She was a stickler about the ice water, and preferred the two knives over a pastry cutter so the dough wouldn't be tough. Her crusts always came out flaky, even the bottoms.

I've heard of using vodka but never tried it. One aunt added a bit of vinegar to hers-I did try that cause she made awesome pies-but couldn't see it made a difference.

For some reason , can't remember, I add a little vinegar to my ice water.

I ate some pie years ago at an Amish restaurant. The crust was delicious so I asked if there was a secret to it and she said yes, but she would give it to me. Add one tablespoon of vinegar to the measuring cup before adding the rest of the water. It is great and I have used it every time.

Hummm...I wonder what the vinegar does? I'll try that next time.

~ C

"Vinegar can serve two useful roles in pie crusts — it promotes tenderness and can keep the crust from getting too brown."

Taken from the following link:

http://www.ochef.com/1214.htm

My pie crust recipe too. From a set of cookbooks I've had for over 50 years.

Freezer Pie crust
 

My mothers pie crust,you can freeze and use as needed.
6 cups flour
2 cups crisco or lard
1 tbs salt
(1 egg beaten with 1 tsp vinegar fill cup with water to make 1 cup liquid)
Add to flour, lard & salt
Mix until crumble bag into 9 balls & freeze.
Best and easiest crust I've ever had.

I only use lard for pastry. It makes a lovely pastry. Tenderflake is the brand I buy, and I use the recipe on the package.

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.

Lard is very acceptable for flaky tender biscuits, crusts and other finer dough. No different then eating bacon.

Lard has such a bad rap but it does make wonderful crusts. I'm quite sure most of the oldtimers didn't have Crisco :D

The recipe I really like is from Lucinda Scala Quinn's old TV show "Mad Hungry". It makes really good pot pies or fruit pies:

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Cream Cheese Pastry Dough

Makes 10 Pocket Pies or 1 Double Crusted 10-Inch Pie
For a novice baker, this is the most forgiving dough to work with. The cream cheese allows this pastry some elasticity but still produces tender and flaky results. It also adds a yummy crackery flavor to the crust. Unconventionally for pie dough, the butter isn’t ice-cold for this recipe.


INGREDIENTS

• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• 4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour plus 2 tablespoons, plus more for rolling out the dough
• 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

DIRECTIONS
1. Process the butter, cream cheese, and cream in a food processor, electric mixer, or by hand to thoroughly combine.
2. Add the flour and salt. Process just until combined and the dough holds together in a ball. Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface. Divide into 2 pieces. Flatten into disks and wrap each in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before rolling out. If the dough is chilled overnight, take it out 15 minutes before rolling out.
3. Rub flour all over a rolling pin. Working with one dough disk at a time, place the disk on a clean, well-floured surface. Applying some pressure with the rolling pin, roll gently from the center of the dough to the top and bottom edges. Rotate the disk and roll to the top and bottom edges again. Reflour the work surface and rolling pin, turn the dough over, and continue to roll the dough from the center out to the edges. Turn over and roll again, rotating the disk to ensure even rolling until the dough is about 12 inches in diameter, thin but not transparent.

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If you don't want to use shortning or butter for your pie crust, coconut oil works very well as a substitute.

Ya know...I'll bet it would, due to it's semi-solid form in cooler temperatures.

Speaking of oil in pie crust, I've seen several recipes for crusts made with vegetable oil instead of shortening. I've never tried them.

~ C

Tropic, I use the same recipe! Mine came from Crisco when they used to have recipes on the back of their labels on the cans. That was in the early 1960's. I have never found a better recipe.