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Pie Crust

L

Lux Man

AK Subscriber
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I just put two pumpkin pies in the oven made fresh with pumpkins from our garden. So here is my question, I always make my own pie dough but have never settled on a sure fire recipe/technique. I typically pretty much follow the receipt from Erma Brombeck's, "The joy of Cooking". I get mixed results from a flakiness stand point and the part where you need to move it from the baking counter into the pie plate. That part is what really get's me, keeping it together.

So can anyone share what they do and it works great every time and it's the best pie crust anyone has ever eaten?
 
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If the crust is tough then you have used too much water. If it is too gluey instead of flaky then it has been mixed too long and the shortening has melted into the flour. The main job is to keep everything cold when working and work fast. The shortening must remain unmelted and the preferred size of the particles of shortening should be about the size of a pea. These then get flattened into the crust and when baked become the flakes we all love so much. Folding the dough over on it self when forming will also help the flakiness. Make it fast and stick it in the freezer, if you must stop for some reason.
 
I agree with all you said. I have even put the mixing bowl in the freezer ahead of time to try to keep it all cool and I use ice water. Now if I can get the exact proportions down, maybe that is my problem.
I'll see how these turn out. I worked them very little, just bringing it all together at the very end with the water.
 
I am in no way qualified to talk pie crusts... Cannot do it. That said, my mother and grandmother are experts. The trick seems to be old-school wax paper.
 
I hate to spring this on you guys at dinner time... Good thing you don't have smell-o-vision.

This beauty comes courtesy on my 11 year-old girl who somehow inherited the pie crust gene. It is cooling right now. 100% scratch crust with the thick homestyle edge and the deep-dark brown color. Excellent local Granny Smiths. I do the knife-work because I am good at that. Cannot make a crust, however. This thing is a work of art.

Breakfast will be a slice and a glass of (also excellent) cider.
 
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I think lard is the key & therefore great pie crust is doomed. My daughter loves to cook, but she's sworn to never make scratch pie crust again. It's that animal fat thing..
 
Lard is great, but makes a tough-to-deal-with crust. It is firm when cold and may crumble. It is very soft at room temperature. My 11 year-old rolls our Grandma's "Easy Crust" which uses high-temp light oil and milk. I think canola. Lard is just oil with little water in it. Why not just use oil? It rolls easy enough with wax paper. You do a 1/2 fold-over trick to deliver the crust to the pan.

BTW, that pie rocked! She splashed in a little cider to acentuate the appleness. Damn fine.
 
jocko_nc said:
I am in no way qualified to talk pie crusts... Cannot do it. That said, my mother and grandmother are experts. The trick seems to be old-school wax paper.
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Completely agree with jocko_nc. Put wax paper down on the counter and roll on top of that. Then put the pie pan on top of dough when ready to move to the pan. Flip it over and gently pull the wax paper off.

Also I still use the old Betty Crocker cookbook from the 1950s/1960s for the dough which is a combination of Crisco lard and flour. I don't know if anybody remembers, but Proctor & Gamble used to have a picture of a little kid dipping a spoon into the can of lard and eating it--haha. Not politically correct today, but who cares.


Yeah baby, look at that beautiful stuff!
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Somehow this just reminds me of a happier time in America--even if men & women had to work harder.
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Well just for the record these two pumpkin pies turned out great. Even my wife said these are the best so far. I started making them from scratch about 15 years ago. The crust was very nice and a bit flaky, but not tough or too hard.

I do use Crisco and butter. 3 cups flour,1 cup Crisco, 6 tbsp, butter, 1 tsp. salt, and I think about 6 tbsp. water. This is for 2 pies crusts.

My neighbor just said the other day she puts some baking soda in to, which is new to me. She claimed is was for flakiness.

I am going to try the waxed paper technique next time. If it makes it easier I am all for it, because getting the crust into the pie plate for me is the biggest challenge. If it falls apart then I have to roll it out again which is not good for the crust.
 
sfox52 said:
I think lard is the key & therefore great pie crust is doomed. My daughter loves to cook, but she's sworn to never make scratch pie crust again. It's that animal fat thing..
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Use Crisco, not real lard (animal fat). Crisco is all vegetable.
 
I learned to bake from my grandmother and her pie crusts were FABULOUS. She always used lard (Crisco) and ice water. One tip I did learn later on that helps make the crust even flakier was to use 1/2 ice water & 1/2 ginger-ale.
 
FTR, lard is rendered pork fat. The best lard comes from the intra-abdominal fat, 'leaf lard', found high on the inside of the carcass, near the tenderloin. Lard is not 'oil with a little water'. It is a highly-saturated fat which is solid at room temperature. You can make a pastry with oil, but, without other means, it will be 'short', IOW, not flaky.

Crisco is vegetable shortening. It is now made with canola oil. There are a few minor changes that can make a big difference in your finished pie crust. First, make sure all of the ingredients, tools and preparation surfaces are cold. For example, use ice cold water instead of room temperature water, use cold shortening, place the rolling pin in the refrigerator 30 minutes prior to rolling out the pie crust, etc. A marble pasty board and rolling pin will aid in this. Second, try to handle the dough as little as possible to keep all of the ingredients as chilled as possible. I have always preferred to use Robin Hood All-purpose flour for piecrusts, a good hard flour. I have always made a traditional lard pastry, from my great-grandmother's recipe. My wife found a quick and easy pastry recipe, that she uses now.

Into her large orange Tupperware bowl, she puts
5 c flour, and cut in 1 lb of shortening.
Pour in 10 oz of 7-up, NOT diet. Put the lid on the bowl, tilt it up on its side, (this part makes me chuckle, every time I watch it) and 'drive' the bowl, like it was a steering wheel, and you are in a gymkhana. You do this for about 3-4 minutes, until blended. Scrape out the bowl, to pull everything together, chill the dough, and use as desired. After I tasted it, I stopped laughing. I know it sounds weird, and it's not my pastry, but it's very flaky, and quite good. Best of all, it got her making pies, which I really like.
 
luvvinvinyl said:
Into her large orange Tupperware bowl, she puts
5 c flour, and cut in 1 lb of shortening.
Pour in 10 oz of 7-up, NOT diet. Put the lid on the bowl, tilt it up on its side, (this part makes me chuckle, every time I watch it) and 'drive' the bowl, like it was a steering wheel, and you are in a gymkhana. You do this for about 3-4 minutes, until blended. Scrape out the bowl, to pull everything together, chill the dough, and use as desired. After I tasted it, I stopped laughing. I know it sounds weird, and it's not my pastry, but it's very flaky, and quite good. Best of all, it got her making pies, which I really like.
Click to expand...

That's a very good recipe that Tupperware recommended and is hard to beat, no pun intended!
 
My wife is allergic to wheat and eggs among darn near everything else so we had to come up with a pie crust she can eat or I'd be forced to eat all of the apple pie myself.

In the gluten free section of the market we found a pie crust that is the best apple pie crust I've ever had. Now I'm not just saying this since I will eat any crust so long as it contains apples and we're pretty good at making them from scratch.

The Gluten Free Pantry Pie Crust comes out about 1/4" of flaky on the top crust and then get this...1/4" of flaky on the bottom as well! Not doughy or flat but flaky.

I kid you not, give it a try if you can find it. The downside is it's about $6.00 or so.
 
I make my grandmother's pie crust which, because she was Jewish, didn't use lard, but instead used frozen butter cut to pea size and worked into the flour with a wire doohickey.
 
A trick I saw on "Good Eats" the other night was to freeze the butter first and then grate it on a big box grater with the big holes bent open a bit more. When that is done you have no "cutting in" of the shortening to do, just mix well.
 
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