Making a homemade pie can seem like a daunting task. Too many things can go wrong, and with frozen pie crusts so easily available, why bother? The answer is twofold: First, because there is nothing like a pie with a melt-in-your-mouth flaky, buttery homemade crust, and second, because it’s easy to make a perfect crust with a few simple tips.
After I learned how to make a perfect pie crust, I made an apple pie for my husband. He is many things, but a man of effusive compliments he is not. So imagine my surprise when he told me, pie in mouth and fork in hand, “I think this is the best apple pie I have ever eaten in my life.”
She shoots, she scores!
Here are the secrets for a pie crust that is light, flaky and tasty every time.
Replace whatever shortening, margarine or butter in your recipe for butter-flavor Crisco. It has the magical combination of buttery taste but the right consistency and fat content of shortening.
Instead of regular water, use ice water, as cold as you can get it. I pour cold water over ice cubes and let it sit a while, then pour the water into the measuring cup from there. This helps the shortening to stay in little blobs that form the flakes in the crust.
Handle the dough as little as possible. The more you knead and roll, the more you mix in the shortening which will give you a tough crust. A trick for easy rolling is to use a canvas mat to roll the dough on and slip a clean knee sock with the foot part cut off over the rolling pin. Spread a little flour on the mat and the sock-covered rolling pin and you have a fabulous nonstick, non-fuss surface.
The more marbled your pie dough looks when it’s rolled out, the better. The flakes in the crust happen when shortening blobs melt in between layers of the flour mixture. To move the pie crust to the pan, I like to fold it in fourths – first in half, then again. Then pick up the crust and place it in the pan with the point of the crust in the middle and unfold.
Pie Crust
2 cups sifted flour
1 tsp. salt
1 cup butter flavor Crisco
1/4 cup ice water
Sift the flour and then measure. Mix the flour and salt together. Cut in the shortening with a pastry blender until mixture is crumbly (the crumbs should be the size of small peas). Stir in the ice water with a fork until the dough holds together. Makes one two-crust pie.
