Grandma's Secret Pie Crust Recipe with Tips for the Perfect Pie Crust (2024)

FAQs

What is the trick to making good pie crust? ›

Start with chilled ingredients

Butter creates a sturdy, crisp pie crust. For this, it is important to keep all ingredients cold which will inhibit the development of gluten in the flour. Use butter right out of the refrigerator and add ice-cold water to make the dough.

#2—Add cold water

Before you start making the dough, fill a glass with ice and water. Add the ice water gradually to the dough, about one tablespoon or so at a time, and stop when the dough is just moist enough to hold together when a handful is squeezed.

PIE DOUGH RULES

As important as not overmixing is staying chilled, literally!! That means keeping all elements cold— your counter, ingredients, hands, heart (just kidding!). No, but seriously, cut up your butter into little cubes and chill them before you incorporate them into the flour.

“My preferred fat for pie crusts will always be butter. To me, it is all about flavor, and no other fat gives flavor to a crust like butter does. Other fats, even though they have great pros, lack flavor,” De Sa Martins said. “The more flavorful the butter, the more flavor your pie crust will have,” Huntsberger added.

It's also about having confidence in what you're doing, which you'll gain by grasping the science of pie dough—how fat, gluten, and water interact. The cardinal rules of pie dough: Keep it cold, work fast, and don't overwork your dough.

Water, however, is absorbed much less easily into flour proteins when the temperature is colder. That's why purists recommend cold ingredients, cold equipment and marble boards. Keeping the butter cold also helps when making short crust pastry because it doesn't melt into the flour when you are working it in.

Rather, pie dough should be flaky and tender! So, it's important to use cold butter and ice water with your flour, as the coldness interrupts gluten development. Try to not handle the dough too much when mixing.

Most instructions will have you defrost the crust, prick the bottom of the crust all over with the tines of a fork, and bake at 375°F to 450°F for 10 to 12 minutes.

Should pie dough be cold before baking? ›

Once the dough is shaped and crimped, the last thing you want to do bake it right away. Chilling the shaped pie allows the aforementioned gluten to relax and the butter to get nice and cold again, both of which help your pie hold its shape better once it's in the oven.

The best pie crust is a perfect balance between fat, flour, and liquid. Too much fat and the crust may taste greasy and crumble as it bakes. Too much liquid can create extra gluten, leading to tough, chewy crust.

1. Use Very Cold Butter or Fat. Butter, shortening, lard, or suet—whatever fat the recipe calls for should be well-chilled and cut into small pieces to start with for the flakiest crust in the end. The fat in a pie crust must maintain some of its integrity in the dough to make the crust truly flaky.

Partially bake a pie crust if your crust needs longer in the oven than the pie filling, such as brownie pie or quiche. And if you want an extra-crisp pie crust for your apple pie, you can partially blind bake the crust before adding the filling.

Choose the Right Rack in the Oven

Which rack you use in the oven can help ensure a crisp crust. Baking the pie on a lower rack will concentrate heat on the bottom of the pie and help the crust crisp.

While butter, shortening, or lard make equally light and tender crusts, an all-butter crust will be flakier due to butter's higher water content: as the crust bakes the butter melts and its water turns to steam, creating thin, crisp layers (flakes).

Egg: The egg in this recipe acts as a binder that allows for a flakier, more delicate crust. It also binds all of your ingredients together so that you can roll out your pie dough without it breaking apart.

Crust dust is a 1:1 mixture of flour and granulated sugar. When baking a pie, especially a fruit pie, a couple of teaspoons of crust dust sprinkled into the bottom of the crust will help prevent the crust from becoming saturated with juicy filling as it bakes.