Basic Pie Crust with Butter Recipe - Making Life Delicious (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to a good pie crust? ›

For Flaky Pie Crust, Keep Everything COLD, Especially Your Butter. If your kitchen is above 73°F, you can refrigerate all of your ingredients and equipment including your bowl, rolling pin, and pie plate until it's between 65-70°F (dip an instant-read thermometer into your flour to gauge the temperature).

Pie and tart doughs have so much butter in them that they almost self-grease as they bake. The butter melts and turns into steam and browns the bottoms making them crispy. If you add more grease into that situation, the texture of your pie crust may change in the oven. So you definitely don't want to overdo it.

“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.

Cons of Butter Pie Crust:

This pie crust dough can be a little more difficult to make, because the cold butter takes a little extra effort to work into the flour than shortening or lard. But we think it's worth the extra elbow grease!

Whether you use a food processor, a stand mixer, or your hands to incorporate the ingredients together, overmixing is a common mistake that leads to a chewy crust. It's tempting when baking to combine the ingredients completely, but the texture should resemble a coarse meal before adding your liquid.

The dough is relatively easy to work with and roll out, and it holds its shape in the oven. The secret lies in using a combination of butter and shortening; butter not only imparts a rich flavor but also contributes to the crust's flakiness, while shortening ensures it maintains its shape and enhances the texture.

The role of fats in creating crusts is twofold: They coat the proteins in flour, preventing gluten development, which yields tenderness, and they produce flakiness by creating steam during baking, forcing apart the layers of pastry.

The pros: Butter has the best flavor. A butter pie crust forms light, lofty, flaky layers while it bakes. The flakiness comes partially from the water content of butter, which evaporates as the pie bakes and turns to steam, separating and puffing up the layers in dough.

Keep the dough ingredients cool

The key to standard pie crust is having pockets of fat surrounded by flour. But if that fat starts to melt and mixes with the flour, it can start to develop gluten, which can lead to a tough crust. To prevent this, keep everything as cold as possible.

The vodka works for two reasons. First, it makes the dough feel way more moist and easier to work with. Second, the ethanol in the vodka stops the gluten in the flour from binding, making for a more tender end product.

Why do you put vinegar in a pie crust? ›

The acidic properties of vinegar inhibit gluten, some will say. This theory proposes that once the water and flour are combined, gluten starts forming, causing the dough to grow tough. Adding an acid, the theory goes, stops the gluten in its tracks and rescues the crust from toughness.

The higher fat percentage in European butters, like Kerrygold and Plugra, is ideal if you're working with pastries where the quality of your dough is directly effected by the quality of your butter. Both Kerrygold and Plugra scored high when making pie dough and had a luscious mouthfeel when tasted solo.

Too much butter will result in a very soft, sticky dough that's difficult to shape, and bakes up greasy and dense.

Pie Myth #4: An All-Butter Crust Is Tough to Work With

But for a crust that's easier to work with and comes out more tender and flaky, you need to cut it with a softer fat like shortening or lard. The idea is that butter is relatively firm when it's chilled, and firm fat means a stiffer dough that's harder to roll out.

#1—Cut the fat into the flour

Over-mixing frequently leads to a tough product. Pie dough is no different—the less you handle it, the better the result. Recipes for pie dough use the “rubbing” mixing method to combine the fat into the dry ingredients.

I always chill my dough for at least 2 hours before rolling out, and then chill again for at least 1 hour after shaping in the pie pan. There are undoubtedly faster methods out there, but this is what I've found to work best for me in terms of maintaining pretty crimps and the overall shape of the crust.

Don't worry about making it perfect, especially if it's just for family. It'll tastes good no matter how it looks. Why do you put vinegar in pie crust? It makes the pie crust exceedingly tender and flaky.

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.