Best Basic Pie Crust Dough

Name: Best Basic Pie Crust Dough
Prep time: 45 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 10
Cuisine: Global
Ingredients: 7 Tbsps very cold butter, cut into small pieces; 591 milliliters flour; 2 teaspoons salt; 7 Tbsps very cold shortening, cut into pieces; 1 Tbsp sugar

Best Basic Pie Crust Dough

Best Basic Pie Crust Dough might be just the crust you are searching for. This recipe makes 10 servings with 268 calories, 3g of protein, and 17g of fat each. This recipe covers 5% of your daily requirements of vitamins and minerals. From preparation to the plate, this recipe takes roughly 45 minutes. Head to the store and pick up butter, sugar, salt, and a few other things to make it today. It is a good option if you're following a vegetarian diet.

Instructions

Mix flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Drop in butter and shortening. Using your hands, a fork, a pastry cutter, or two knives, work butter and shortening into the flour mixture until it resembles cornmeal with some small pea-size pieces.

Ingredients you will need

Shortening

Cornmeal

Butter

All Purpose Flour

Sugar

Salt

Equipment you will use

Pastry Cutter

Bowl

Using a fork, quickly stir in 1/2 cup ice water (mixture will not hold together). Turn dough and crumbs onto a clean surface. Knead just until dough starts to hold together but some bits still fall away, 5 to 10 times. Divide dough in half and pat each half into a 6-in. disk. Wrap each disk in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 20 minutes and up to overnight.

Ingredients you will need

Water

Dough

Wrap

Equipment you will use

Plastic Wrap

Pie Crust Without Fear: Even experienced cooks can find it intimidating to make pie pastry. The following tips will help you turn out a terrific crust with ease.

Ingredients you will need

Pie Dough

Pie Crust

Crust

Keep the dough cold and the butter chunky. For a flaky crust, keep the butter from melting into the dough before baking. Why? Those bits of butter, which should be roughly pea-size, are meant to melt in the oven, giving off steam that creates flaky pockets. If the dough seems to be softening too much as you're working with it, throw it in the refrigerator for 15 minutes. As you roll out the dough, you should see veins of butter running through it.

Ingredients you will need

Butter

Crust

Dough

Roll

Equipment you will use

Oven

Roll out from the center. It's much easier to roll dough into a circle if you work from the center out to the edge in all directions.

Ingredients you will need

Dough

Roll

Don't overdo it. Overworking the dough and using too much flour can make pie crust tough and dry. Try to keep a light hand with both, rolling just enough to reach your desired size and using only enough flour to keep the dough from sticking to the counter.

Ingredients you will need

Pie Crust

Dough

All Purpose Flour

Use a pie crust bag. This handy tool takes the strain out of rolling by providing a nonstick round frame for the dough as you roll it out, allowing you to use less flour and avoid shaggy edges. Simply put your chilled dough in the bag, zip it up, roll it out, and transfer it to your pan. The bags come in different sizes for regular and deep-dish pies and are available from many online sources (such as www.sugarcraft.com; $3 to $6 per bag).

Ingredients you will need

Pie Crust

Dough

All Purpose Flour

Roll

Equipment you will use

Frying Pan

Use store-bought dough. If you're short on time (or patience), you can always use ready-made dough. In our tests, we preferred Pillsbury Just Unroll refrigerated pie crusts ($99), which have a nicely crisp texture (if slightly bland flavor) and Trader Joe's Gourmet Pie Crusts ($49), which have a more buttery finish.

Ingredients you will need

Pie Crust

Dough

Crimp the edges. Crimping or fluting the edges of a double-crust pie seals the dough and keeps the filling from leaking out during baking. Even on a single-crust pie, crimping can create a helpful dam effect. There are many good techniques, but our favorite is to pinch the dough around the index finger of one hand using the thumb and forefinger of the other.

Ingredients you will need

Crust

Dough