Baking Dessert

Buttery Pie Crust Recipe

You can have the best pie filling in the world but without a great pie crust recipe you just cannot have the world’s best pie. This recipe is meant to be followed carefully with a couple of special notes.

Your ingredients, hands, and even your kitchen should be relatively cold. AC out? Don’t try this pie crust recipe.
Consistency of the dough is everything when it comes to rolling out a pie crust. The reason you want everything to be cold is because the heat of your hands could melt the butter and throw the whole thing off
Use high-protein flour to make sure the dough truly binds. This will help prevent cracking

Instructions

Dough

Sift together flour and salt
Cut butter into thin pats* and add to flour one at a time, lightly brushing each pat through the flour.
Using a rubber spatula, “slice” pats of shortening through the flour mixture as you did the butter
Use a pastry blender** to thoroughly cut ingredients together until the mixture resembles small peas
Pour about 1/2 the buttermilk over the mixture in a circular motion. Fold ingredients together with a rubber spatula
Assess how crumbly your dough is before making small additions of buttermilk. You will know when to stop when you can lightly form the dough into a ball with your hands. The dough should still have a little crumb-and-crack to it.

Rolling

Rip off a large square of parchment paper and set it down. Use it as your measuring guide to rip another square of the same size
Dust the bottom sheet with flour and rub the two pieces together
Place half the ball of dough down on one piece of parchment, cover it with the other piece of parchment, then take your rolling pin and give the dough a little whack to flatten.
Roll out dough between two pieces of parchment paper starting from the middle out. Flip your dough-paper sandwich over multiple times to ensure it is rolling evenly.
Take your pie tin and hold it upside down over the dough. The rolled dough should be the diameter + two inches. Peel back the top layer of parchment very slowly.
Set your rolling pin down about 3 inches from one edge of the dough. Lifting the parchment paper first, lay those three edges on the pin. Then roll the rest of the dough onto the rolling pin. Now you can easily unroll it onto the pie tin.
If you have major cracks or need to repair the crust dip your fingertips in ice water and smooth the seams over.

Pre Bake: Prick the bottom and sides of the pie thoroughly. Bake at 400 degrees for about 8 minutes (I always check it at 5 minutes and go from there.)

*Hold the stick steady with the lightest pressure of two fingers. You want to touch the butter as little as possible.

**If you’ve never heard the term before, don’t worry, it’s not a fancy kitchen appliance. Rather, a small wire tool like this.