Pie Crust

Can we talk about pie crust for a minute? Just a moment. Please don't scream, or hyperventilate, or run away. 

It has come to my attention that pie crust is something of a fear among the semi-cooking population of women. Perhaps not quite as badly feared as spiders, but possibly fairly close. 

Listen to me. 

It can smell fear. 

You can't show it that you are afraid. 

You have to show the pie crust who is boss. It's just a little blob of flour and butter. It can't hurt you.

Promise.

You can make a pie crust. You can make a lovely pie crust. You can make a flaky, buttery, light, salty, crispy, delightful pie crust. 

You can make a pie crust that you will want to bake and eat all by itself. 

Not that I may or may not have done that....

Ok, are you with me? Lets make a pie crust, ok? Now, true to my general cooking form, we aren't going to use a whole bunch of fancy ingredients. Those may work for some people, but I am not smart enough to remember them all, so I just stick with the pie crust my grandmother taught me how to make (Hi Mamma!). It's easy, it's really good, and it is totally unhealthy, which all good things, of course, are. 

Take flour. Got the flour? Ok, now take salt. Salt the flour.
Just a dash of salt.
You know.
Some salt.

Now take butter. Add half as much butter as flour. Tip: The butter should be really really cold. Pretty much frozen. I actually use frozen margarine. That way, the butter won't fall apart but will stay in flaky chunks in your crust.

Yes, that means that for every cup of flour you have half a cup of butter.

Cut the butter into the flour until you have little chunks. About pea-sized. Big peas. Now add some very, very cold water. I put pieces of ice in the water I'm going to use. You want this water barely above freezing, because you don't want your frozen little bits of butter to melt.

About half as much water as butter, but play it by ear. You want only enough water so that your dough barely sticks together. It will kind of look like the picture below. Mix it together, tossing it with your fingers. Do not knead it. Do not squish it. Just mix it tossy-like.

 

Now, with lots of flour on the counter, roll out the dough. Make sure you have a lot of flour on the counter and on the rolling pin and on your apron and all around. If your crust sticks to the counter, then you have a sticky swiss-cheese looking crust. And I'm not a big fan of swiss cheese pie crusts. 

What works for me to get the crust into the pan, is to fold the crust in fourths, move it, and unfold it. It works. Really, it does!

Ok. Now go make a pie. 

With this yummy pie crust. 

Ok?