This is my mother-in-law’s go to recipe for pie crust. The original recipe is here. The most frequent comments that I’ve seen on homemade pie crusts include the importance of cold ingredients/tools and not working the dough too much. Using a small measured amount of ice cold water so the dough just sticks together ensures that your crust won’t be too tough or too crumbly. Once the dough is made you’ll want to refrigerate it for 2 hours up to overnight to ‘relax the gluten’ and re-solidify the fats in the dough so it says in a flaky state and will help prevent shrinking as it bakes. I have a hard time eye-balling 9″ diameter so I just turn the pie plate over to trace the outline on some wax paper so I know when I’ve reached the appropriate diameter and then go 2″ outside of the line to ensure I can have enough height for a 1/2″ crimp on the crust.
Makes 2 pie crusts.
Ingredients:
- 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup (2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
- 6 tablespoons (about) ice water
Directions:
Mix flour, sugar, and salt in processor. Add butter; pulse until coarse meal forms. Gradually blend in enough ice water to form moist clumps – no more than 30 seconds. Gather dough into ball; divide in half. Form dough into 2 balls; flatten into disks (aids in rolling it out the next day). Wrap each in plastic; chill 2 hours or overnight.
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