Tips and Tricks for Pie Crust?

Any good bakers here? Tips on making a good pie crust?

Did a hand made pie crust for the first time. For a quiche. Turned out fine, but not great. Not as good as a frozen crust. Wasn't tough. But more crumbly than moist or flakey.

Recipe was all shortening. Plan to do half butter next time.

Also, what is the deal with keeping everything as cold as possible?

Cold helps things not stick. Warm it up, the gluten and things become more pliable and sticky.

The only real tip I have is use the butter flavor crisco. Makes it suuuuper buttery. Also, don't be afraid of flour dusting your surfaces to roll it out. Keeps it from tearing and adhering to your pin/table.

Keep all ingredients cold to keep the fat in the butter/shortening from liquefying before it hits the oven. That's how you get flaky layers in biscuits too! My secret for the best pie crust ever? Vodka. Yep, I use it in place of some of the water my age-old recipe calls for. It keeps everything moist during the rolling process, so you get less crubmly-ness and breakage in the transfer to the pie, but it evaporates during the baking process and leaves no alcohol in the finished product (no taste either). Plus, you can sip on some vodka while you make your pies. It is the best of all worlds.

ECM is doing it right.

I think we read about it from Cooks Illustrated.

Might want to try using lard as well - although I've typically gone the lazy route and used frozen crusts myself.

I use a recipe from my Aunts Joy of Cooking book from 1938. I found the biggest improvement was using a food processor instead of hand cutting

I go 2/3 lard, 1/3 butter.

Yeah, food processors are preferred due to the fact that they can mix the ingredients faster resulting in less melting of fats. Cooks Illustrated is where I got the vodka tip as well. I love that mag almost as much as GRM.

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/french-tart-dough-a-la-francaise/

This is the one to try. Now its a tart crust but it works equally well on pie. Super easy and never fails. Davids recipes are 100% gold standards for a lot of bakers.

Agreed on Cook's Illustrated--also love me some Fine Cooking magazine.

And ECM is correct: You need to keep all ingredients cold because you don't want to melt the fats. When the fats go into the oven unmelted, they form little steamy pockets of love inside the dry ingredients that create the flakiness and moisture you need in a crust. That's also why the texture is so crucial--it's important you not overmix the ingredients. Here's the Cook's Illustrated recipe. Note that you process just until dough starts to clump, when texture is cottage-cheese-like and there are still some bits of butter.

Margie

I make mine with butter. Two things: First. Be a bit lazy when you cut the butter in. You don't want to mix it completely. The fat pieces get too small to do their job. Second, the amount of water is just a suggestion. Experiment to find out what you need to make it work. You want it to just barely stick together and then wrap it up and let it rest in the fridge for an hour and the moisture will even out so you don't have dry spots that tear when you roll it out. The better you are at figuring out water the less mixing you have to do and the crust stays tender.
OK, three things, pie pans matter. I don't think I've ever cooked a good crust in a metal pie plate. Glass work well. I have a couple of stoneware pie plates made by a potter in upper Michigan that make me look like a pie crust god.

Edit: I use the basic pie crust recipe from King Arthur. Also religiously use King Arthur flour. It's the best.

Dr.Linda uses butter, flour and some salt. Mashes it out on some wax paper on the table with a big roller.

Marjorie Suddard wrote: You need to keep all ingredients cold because you don't want to melt the fats.

Although they are not technically "ingredients", you also want to keep your hands cold when you cut in the fat. Serious pie bakers of my acquaintance plunge their hands into bowls of ice water before working in their fats.

Pie crust recipe:

Half butter, half flour, half shortening

I'll post my grandma's recipe...some day. It has vinegar instead of Vodka.

akylekoz wrote: I'll post my grandma's recipe...some day. It has vinegar instead of Vodka.

Another vote for ditching the vinegar and using Vodka..

EastCoastMojo wrote: Keep all ingredients cold to keep the fat in the butter/shortening from liquefying before it hits the oven.

Keep your Crisco in the fridge, use ice water, handle as little as possible.

If you rub the top crust with sour cream before baking, it will turn out golden and beautiful.

The real deal with keeping it cold is you don't want the fat to melt or liquify and permeate all the dry goods.

That way, as the fat melts during baking, it flows out to the rest of they dry goods pulling gluten and starch along with it. Bingo. Flakes.

Don't overwork it. Make it, keep it cold. Make it like biscuit dough; kinda crumbly and hard to work with. The harder it is to transfer to the pan, the better it will be.

Use as little water as possible. That's one reason why vodka is used... It evaporates during cooking. I use all butter.