How To Make The Best Pie Crust

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It’s the perfect time of year to talk about pies! More specially, I’ll be talking about the crust in today’s post.

I accidentally stumbled onto this recipe. I love watching You Tube for cooking from scratch inspiration and new recipe ideas. I was looking for a good pop tart recipe to try for the kids when I happened onto Cowboy Kent Rollins channel. If you’ve never heard of Cowboy Kent Rollins, you really are missing out. His videos are awesome and his recipes are even better.

After watching him make pop tarts, I set to work. It’s actually very simple, but my first attempt did not work out. In my opinion, the dough was too thick for pop tarts and it changed the texture for me. However, in hindsight, had I let the dough chill longer and then rolled it out thinner it would have worked just fine.

While I was eating this not quite right pop tart, I thought “this would make an excellent pie crust.” It’s just dense enough, but yet a little light too. That probably doesn’t make any sense at all, sorry. It holds up well to filling and is just the right amount of flaky.

Here’s the original recipe for the crust form Kent Rollins website.

Over the holidays I have cranked out a lot of pie crust using this recipe. I’ll take you through the process and also provide a few tips and tricks for cooking and storing.

First things first, let’s add the dry ingredients to a bowl.

Flour, sugar, and salt.

Whisk that all together and set aside.

Time for the butter. This is not near as complicating as it sounds. The goal here is to incorporate the butter with the flour mixture until you have coarse crumbs, something close to a sandy texture.

The easiest way to do this is to freeze your sticks of butter while you are preparing the four mixture. Then take the butter out of the freezer and immediately use a hand grater to grate the butter. This will make it easier to work with.

Using your hands, work the butter into the flour squeezing each little piece of butter as you go until the mixture resembles course crumbs.

Try not to be alarmed by the amount of butter I used. Like I said, I made a lot of pies. I also made some extra crust to freeze.

With the butter all worked in, it’s time to add the water. Start with the 1/3 cup of water, but you may need to add more.

Since I was making so much, I had a hard time getting the dough all mixed in, so I ended up dumping all the dough onto the counter. It was easier to mix.

You don’t knead the dough. It’s more like working with play dough. You just want to mix in all the water to the dough until it all sticks together and can form a ball or a square. Just a solid shape.

If you make according to the recipe (so no doubling for extra), this will make two pie crust. Once you get the dough formed into a large ball, cut it in half and then you will wrap it in plastic wrap at that time.

Again in these pictures, I made extra. That’s why I have so many mounds of dough on my counter.

The dough needs to chill for at least 30 minutes in the refrigerator. I found that it works a lot better when I chilled mine overnight.

It sticks together better and is easier to roll out.

There you have it. We just made two pie crust from scratch! Now let’s get to some tips and tricks!

• If the dough gets too wet, just add a little bit of flour. Again we are looking for a dough that is pliable. Somewhat crumbly but still sticks together to make a shape.

• Once the dough is in the pan, don’t forget to use a fork to poke holes in the bottom of the crust.

• For a flaky crust, bake your pie at 425 degrees for 15 minutes and then reduce temperature to 350 degrees for an additional 15-20 minutes.

• To prevent my top dough and outer edges from buring, I cover with foil for the first 15 minutes. Then bake uncovered until the pie is golden brown.

How to store the dough.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator for up to two or three days.

You can place the wrapped dough in a freezer bag and freeze for up to six months.

How to use the dough for pie.

For fresh dough- Take out of the refrigerator and allow it to come up to room temperature a bit on the counter. You should be able to then roll out the dough to the desired thickness for a pie.

Typically dough that is 1/4 inch thick works well. As you roll the dough, turn the dough each time you roll and that help keeps a circle dough shape if you are using a circular pie plate. .

As always, make sure you put the dough on a well floured surface before rolling. Adding flour on your rolling pin will keep the dough from sticking to the rolling pin.

For frozen dough- the frozen dough can either be put into the refrigerator to thaw or you can put it out on the counter. Just know that it will take longer to thaw and be workable on the counter.

I usually put my frozen dough in the refrigerator to thaw overnight and then the next day I work it up like I would with fresh dough that has been stored in the fridge to chill.

To pre-cook the dough or not?

If you are like me and don’t have a lot of experience with home made pies, you might be wondering if you are supposed to cook the pie crust before or after the you fill it.

That all depends on the type of pie you are making.

I chose the classic pies, apple, chocolate, and of course pumpkin.

A good rule of thumb is, if you have to bake the filling, then you will also have to bake the crust. So, for apple, the apples of course have to cook.

For apple pie, you layer the crust on the bottom of the pie plate. Then add the apple pie filling, then you can add the top crust. Here is where you can get creative.

You can just put the other pie dough on top of the entire pie or using a pizza cutter, you can cut strips from your dough and do a pretty lattice pattern on top, which is what my daughter chose to do for our pies.

For Pies that have a filling that doesn’t need cooked, like a chocolate pie, you will bake the crust ahead of time. A good tip is to not over bake. For a chocolate pie with meringue, it will go back into the oven to brown the meringue so the crust will get a bit of extra cook time.

My pie crust may not be the prettiest, but it tastes amazing and that’s what really matters!

Let me know what you think of this recipe and enjoy!