Easy Pie Crust

Easy Pie Crust

This is a 3, 2, 1 recipe.

3 parts flour

2 parts fat

1 part water

Normally it’s made with 3lbs flour, 2 lbs fat, 1 lb water but that makes a giant batch! It probably makes around 10+ pies so I am going to cut it in half.

Also you can use a variety of fats for this. You can use butter, shortening or lard either by themselves or a combination of the three. Pure butter tastes the best, but doesn’t hold up as well under the heat of the oven. Shortening holds up well but doesn’t taste as good and lard makes the flakiest crust of all. I like to use half butter, half shortening for mine.

This half batch makes about 6-7 pie crusts:

1 ½ lb (3 cups) flour

½ lb (1 cup) butter, cold

½ lb (1 cup) shortening

½ lb (1 cup) ice water

1-2 tsp salt or sugar (depending on your pie – if it’s super sweet, add salt. If it’s not, add sugar)

The trick to good pie crust is to keep it as cold as possible. Use cold butter, ice water and put the dough in the fridge when the butter starts to melt in your hands to cool it back down.

In a large bowl add flour and all your fat. Using your super clean hands start breaking the fat up and incorporating it into the flour. You will continue to do this until the butter/shortening pieces are about the size of a pea or a little smaller.

If the butter starts to get warm, put in the fridge for about 30 minutes to chill it back down again.

Once the butter is incorporated into the flour, add the ice water and mix with your hands just until it comes together into a dough. Do not knead it, it will break up the butter chunks.

Roll it out and put into a pie plate. Once it’s in the pie plate, you don’t have to worry about chilling it anymore. If you mess up on rolling the first time, put that part of the dough into the fridge and work with the rest of the dough.

Shape and use like normal pie crust.