You can’t have a good pie without good pie crust. The key to good pie crust is cold ingredients and minimal handling of the dough. You should see chunks of butter throughout the dough, which will guarantee the flakiness we all love. Make sure the dough stays cold and that the butter doesn’t soften. If you don’t have a food processor, you can use a pastry cutter or even your hands, pinching the butter into the flour.

This makes enough for one pie.

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup (113g) Cold Unsalted Butter, cut into cubs

1 ½ (180g) All Purpose Flour

1/8 Tsp Salt

5-7 Tbs Ice Water

Directions

1.  Place the butter, flour and salt in a food processor or a blender. Process/blend until the butter is the size of peas. 

3.  Add the ice water and blend until the dough comes together in to a ball. 

4.  Dump the dough on to a floured surface and knead lightly to form a ball or disk. At this stage, you can line a pie dish or simply wrap the dough tightly and freeze until you want to use it. 

Store tightly wrapped in the refrigerator for up to 2 days, or freeze for up to 3 weeks.

• If you are blind baking crust for a baked pie recipe, then roll this pie dough out to 1/4-inch thickness and an 11-inch circle. Gently drape the circle of dough over your 9-inch pie pan, letting it fall into the pan naturally. Don’t stretch pie dough because it will shrink in the oven if you do.

• Gently press the dough into all the corners and edges of the dish, you should have about an inch of excess dough hanging over the sides. Use either kitchen shears or a knife to gently cut about half of the excess dough from around the edges, then fold the rest of the excess over itself towards the center of the pie dish to make a thicker outer edge.

• Crimp the dough using any crimping style you like, place a sheet of foil in the dough and fill to the very top with dry beans or pie weights. Make sure the weights are pressed against the dough.

• Bake at 375F for 20 minutes, remove the weights and foil and prick the dough with a fork, then bake for another 15 minutes or until light golden brown.

• At this point, you can fill with whatever pie filling you need and bake it until set.