Pie Crust

Notes on Ingredients:

Flour: Use All Purpose or pastry flour, not bread (high gluten) flour; the gluten makes the crust tough. On the other hand, cake flour may lack enough protein to form a workable, elastic dough. Do not mix or handle the dough too much as this develops gluten. After mixing, let rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to let the gluten relax and the flour absorb the moisture.

Fat: In making pastry dough, the fat is cut into the flour so that the two proteins in flour, which make up the gluten, cannot come together to link up and form a chain or strand. When you rub fat into the flour, it coats the flour particles and creates a waterproof barrier. This prevents the water added later from reaching the gluten-forming proteins, effectively blocking their ability to bind together. Any gluten that does manage to form is coated and lubricated by the fat, which interferes with its ability to develop into long, strong, elastic strands. This process literally "shortens" the gluten strands, keeping the finished texture tender and crumbly.

Both shortening and lard contain more fat than butter, which is composed of about 80% fat and 20% water and other milk solids. This means that when you use the same amount of shortening or lard as you would butter in a recipe, you’ll inevitably be adding more total fat – and consequently a bit more tenderness – to the pastry. But what you gain in tenderness, you may lose in flakiness. That’s because the extra water in butter helps create steam, which can contribute lighter, flakier layers in your fully baked piecrust. For this reason, an all-butter piecrust is often considered the holy grail of pie, but a combination of butter and shortening or lard can make for a best-of-both-worlds crust.

Liquid: In many recipes, the liquid of choice is water, specifically ice water, which prevents fat from melting before your crust goes in the oven. This makes sense: Water is easily accessible and works perfectly well. However, water can also act as a catalyst for gluten development, and too much gluten can make piecrust tough. Luckily, you can benefit from water’s structural benefits while mitigating gluten development by adding other liquids either in place of or in combination with water. 

Using acidic ingredients is one way to reduce gluten formation, which is why vinegar is a popular addition to piecrust. The problem with vinegar is that you can’t use that much of it before your crust starts to take on an acidic flavor. You need to dilute it significantly with water, thereby greatly diminishing any effect it might have. Similar to acidic liquids, the alcohol in vodka prevents gluten development, and because it’s fairly neutral in flavor, it can be used at a higher percentage than vinegar. One popular recipe calls for an equal amount of vodka and water (¼ cup of each) to hydrate the piecrust. The result is a crust that is flaky, tender, and a relative breeze to roll out.

Temperature: Ultimately, the idea is to keep the pie dough somewhere between 68° and 72°F, so it stays pliable, cool, and easy to handle. Below that range (especially in a cold kitchen), the dough will be crumbly and prone to cracking when rolled. Above that range (particularly in a warm kitchen), the dough will be sticky and eager to tear.

Summary: If flakiness is important to you, an all-butter crust made with vodka is likely your best bet. If you’re more into that tender, melt-in-your-mouth effect, go for a combination of lard or shortening and butter, try out a pastry flour (different from cake flour).

Also see The Food Lab: The Science of Pie Dough - According to Seriouseats, the key to a flaky pie crust is to coat all the flour with fat (butter, lard, etc.) initially so when you add the water, the flour cannot absorb it. This recipe uses a high amount of fat.

For a Crusty treat, roll left-over dough out to about 1/8" thick, transfer to a flat cookie sheet, spread with a little butter, then sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Bake 5-7 minutes at 450°. When we were young, Mom always let us do this with the leftover scraps of dough. It was my favorite part of pie baking.

Common Pie Pan Sizes and Volumes

6-inch Pie Pan: About 1 1/2 cups (355mL)
9-inch Pie Pan: Around 4 cups (950 mL)
9.5-inch Deep Dish Pie Pan: Roughly 7 cups (1.65 L)

Flaky Pie Crust
Betty Crocker Cookbook, 1950 edition

Pastry for Two-Crust Pies

Pastry for One-Crust Pies

Mix the flour and salt together. Cut in half of the shortening using a pastry blender until the mixture looks like meal. [You are here coating the flour with the shortening. Do not underestimate the importance of this step.] Cut in the remaining shortening coarsely, until the size of peas.

Stella Parks advises, "It takes big chunks of butter to create big, flaky layers in a pie crust, so check that concept of "mealy, pea-sized bits" at the dough-or [door]. I start with butter that's cut into cubes no smaller than half an inch (slightly larger is fine, but take care not to go under). From there, each piece is smashed once, like bubble wrap, to create a flaky mix. That's it!" She does this with her fingers. Cut up the cold butter, toss it with flour, and squish each cube flat.

Her techinque for adding the liquid is to stir all the water into the flour and butter mixture, then knead dough against sides of the bowl until it comes together in a shaggy ball.

Her recipe (https://www.seriouseats.com/old-fashioned-flaky-pie-dough-recipe):

8 ounces low-protein all-purpose flour, such as Gold Medal Blue Label (1 2/3 cups; 225 g), plus more for dusting
1/2 ounce sugar (1 tablespoon; 15 g)
1 teaspoon (4 g) Diamond Crystal kosher salt; for table salt, use 1/2 teaspoon or use the same weight
8 ounces unsalted, American-style butter, straight from the fridge (2 sticks; 225 g), cold
4 ounces cold tap water (1/2 cup; 115 g)

Sprinkle with the water, 1 T. at a time, and mix with a fork until all the flour is moistened and the dough has started to form a ball. Be careful not to overwork the dough, thus forming glutin; it makes the dough tough, as does adding too much water. To ensure a flaky pastry, use a light hand, keeping the flour as loose as possible. Stirring or mashing blends the flour and fat together, eliminating the potential for flaky layers. When pastry dough is overworked in this manner, the resulting mass can’t absorb enough water. And without enough water, little or no steam can form in the oven to expand the layers.

To test your dough, gather up half of it with floured hands, pressing it against the side of the bowl. All the crumbs should adhere and leave the bowl clean. It should not crumble apart, but some cracks are fine.

• Add water until you can form a ball that doesn’t crumble when you pull it apart. Note that liquid is important for structure, but adding too much of it can lead to too much structure (i.e. toughness).
• If your dough crumbles as you try to gather it into a ball, add water a teaspoon at a time, until. it forms a more cohesive ball; you might not need all the water.
• Too little liquid will cause your pastry to crack and fall apart during rolling and shaping.
• Too much water makes a sticky dough, which results in a tough and chewy crust instead of tender and flaky. If your pie crust is tough instead of tender and flaky, you probably either overworked the dough or added too much water to it.

Gather the ball together (do no knead or work any further) and shape into a flat round disk.

Dough should be wrapped and refrigerated for at least 1/2 hour at this time to chill the dough and relax the glutin. If you pull a pie out of the oven and the crust has shrunk and hunched onto itself, it's a sign that you didn't let it rest before baking. Letting the dough rest is key because it allows the gluten to relax so that it doesn't seize up and retract on you later.

Cut pastry dough for two-crust pies into two. Roll dough out using a little flour on both the counter and the rolling pin to keep it from sticking. When placing dough in the pie pan, do not stretch the dough. That poses a problem when you bake it, because the dough will spring back.

Freezing Dough: You can even freeze dough for later use. I often make enough crust for a two-crust pie when I only need one crust and freeze half. I love it when I already have a crust ready to roll out for a recipe I am making, such as quiche. Just remove the dough from the freezer and let it defrost in the frig.

Instructions for Blind Baking: Blind Baking is used for pie crusts that are completely baked before filling. Used for pie fillings that do not get baked, such as Banana or other Cream Pies, Lemon Meringue Pie, and Butterscotch Pie.

Partially baking, or “par-baking” helps some one-crust pies, as well as quiche, that are filled then baked, have a crisper, as opposed to soggy, bottom crust. Par-bake the crust until very lightly browned, about 7 - 8 minutes. Two-crust pie crusts are not par-baked. (Brushing with an egg wash, or bacon fat for quiche, on the bottom of the crust before filling has the same effect.)

Always bake pies with a filling on a lower rack in the oven so that the bottom crust gets done.