Pie Crusts Recipe, How to Make Pie Crusts, Family Recipes

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In baking you need to always have the ingredients measured precisely. Use a knife to level the flour, salt or baking powder since baking is relying on the chemistry. When you have an ingredient 'heaping' you have changed the chemistry!

Pie Crusts

3 cups flour
1 tsp salt
8-9 tbls ice water
1 cup cold lard or butter flavored shortening

This pie crust recipe makes 2 crusts for deep 9-10 inch pie pans or 1 double crust. Put a few ice cubes in a measuring cup and add in the water. Preheat oven according to directions!

In a medium sized bowl, mix the flour and salt. Use a pastry knife and cut in butter to the size of peas. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of the water over a part of the dough and use a fork to toss the mix and push this to one side of the bowl. Continue this process till dough is moistened. Using a spatula, fold half of this dough onto freezer paper, top with 2nd piece and roll out about 13” across. Trim to about ½ inch over edge and fill pie.

If you want to bake pie shells empty for a cream pie that has a cooked filling, then prick holes an inch apart over the bottom and sides with the tines of a fork and preheat the oven to 450 and bake for 8-10 minutes.

Flaky Pie Crust Basics

When a cold fat product is mashed into layers by rolling and the fat prevents the flour in part of the crust from sticking to the flour on another part of the crust, then a flaky crust is the result. Once you understand what to do, you can make perfect crusts.

Follow these rules;
1. Cold lard or shortening right out of refrigerator.
2. Only cut fat into flour to the size of a pea.
3. Water should be ice cold.
4. Oven temperature must be high enough.

If the lard is soft and warm before you make the dough, or even warmed by your hands with too much handling, or completely warmed by your pouring a still hot filling that was just cooked, it will make a flaky crust impossible.

To prevent over handling, the easiest way to roll out dough is mounding half the dough between two sheets of butcher freezer wrap with the waxy side touching the dough. Roll out the dough, then pull off top layer, invert pie plate over the crust, then pick up bottom sheet and invert over pie plate and remove last sheet of paper. You can use wax paper but you may have to overlap two pieces. Put in frig to chill until ready to go in the oven.

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Pie Crusts