Norwich, Vermont
Pie tips
Are you scared of making pie crust? Convinced you just can't do it "right"? Banish your fear by reading Our Favorite Pie Crust Recipe, then follow these easy step-by-step directions. You’ll be making tender, flaky pie crust before you know it--and you’ll never buy a frozen crust again!
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- 1) Mix your dry ingredients, and add the cold fat of your choice. We’ve chosen butter here; vegetable shortening or lard are also appropriate. It’s important that the fat is cold, so that it doesn’t melt into the flour. Ultra-thin layers of fat and flour/water are what form the lovely flakes in piecrust as it bakes.
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- 2) Mix until unevenly crumbly. Again, don’t let the fat become completely blended with the flour. You want to leave some good-sized (about as big as a pecan half) pieces.
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- 3) Add ice water till the dough is cohesive. This dough needs a tiny bit more water…
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- 4) Ah-HA! Perfect.
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- 5) Shape the dough into a disk. Roll the disk like a wheel, in order to make it as round as possible. This rolling also prevents the dreaded "ragged edge syndrome"—those unattractive ragged edges you often get when rolling piecrust.
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- 6) When the dough is as perfectly round and as smooth as you can make it, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Dough can stay refrigerated up to 2-3 days. If it’s been in the fridge longer than 30 minutes, give it about 30 minutes to warm up a bit and become flexible before rolling, especially if you’ve used butter or lard, rather than shortening (the warming-up time for shortening is, well, shorter).
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- 7) Flour your work surface thoroughly to prevent sticking. Working from the center out to the edges, and giving the dough a quarter turn with each stroke, roll the disk into a circle. Now you’re ready to make a regular single crust (or extra-wide rustic crust) to line a pie pan; a standard lattice-top crust; a decorative lattice-top crust; or cutout pastry decorations, for topping fruit crisps, or the edge of your double-crust pie.
Now, to make crust to line a pie pan, you have to decide how big a circle to roll. Measure the bottom diameter of your pie pan, plus its height. Add the diameter, plus 2X the height, then add 2"-that’s your desired diameter. Example: For a 9" x 1 1/2" pie pan that slopes down to a 7" bottom diameter, add 7" (diameter) + 1 1/2"; + 1 1/2" (two times the height) + 2" to yield 12"-and that’s the diameter of the circle you want to roll.
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- The easiest way to transfer the crust to the pan is to fold it in quarters…
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- …and unfold it in the pan. Here we’ve rolled the crust extra-big-17", to be exact. Rather than roll a top crust, we’re simply going to fold the bottom crust up and over the filling…
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- …like this. Brush the crust with milk, and sprinkle with coarse sparkling sugar, if desired.
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- Bake as your recipe directs, till golden brown. And there you have it—pie without piecrust angst.
Helpful tools
Times change, and just because Grandma used an old wine bottle to roll her crusts, that doesn’t mean you have to! We offer lots of tools guaranteed to smooth your path to pie-making success.
- A pastry blender or pastry fork work butter and shortening into flour without warming them up, which promotes a flakier crust.
- A top-quality silicone rolling pin moves smoothly over dough, with much less sticking than a wooden pin. And rolling dough on a silicone mat not only prevents sticking, but makes cleanup a snap.
- Use a pastry brush to brush milk or beaten egg over your crust before sprinkling with coarse sugar.
Ingredients
- All-purpose or Mellow Pastry Blend are your best bet for pie crust.
- We also like to add a bit of buttermilk powder to our crust, for tenderness.
- A scattering of coarse sparkling sugar across the top of your crust is a lovely final touch.
Baking
- A 9" pie pan is your best all-around size; choose stoneware, or dark aluminum.
- A pie shield prevents the edges of your crust from burning.
- To prevent messy oven spills, set your pie on a baking sheet lined with parchment.
- Finally, flexible oven mitts are key to moving a hot pie from oven to cooling rack.
