Love Life N Lollypop: The Perfect Pie Crust

Home-made Easy Pie Crust

I love pie. I love to eat them and I love to make them.

The first few times I baked a pie, I made it with store bought ready crusts and while they turned out fine, it just never gave the pleasure that I usually get from my baking. But I always hesitated to bake my own crust as I thought it will be difficult and I may not get the right results. And at first it didn’t. But then I looked up a lot of recipes, did my own tinkering and finally came up with this fool-proof recipe that is not only easy but results in a delicious flaky-crumbly-buttery pie crust.

The same recipe can be used for sweet and savoury dishes. You just need to skip the sugar if you are making a savoury recipe. I use this recipe for my Easy Apple Pie Recipe.

I prefer to make the pastry dough on the food processor as its fast and does not create a mess. But you can use a stand mixer, hand-held or use your hand. After all, people have used their hands to mix pastry crust dough for ages. You need to follow the same instructions.

What you need:

Flour - 2 cups (all purpose or cake flour)
Salt – ½ tsp

Powdered Sugar - 1 tbsp
Cold Butter - ¾ cup
Ice water - 6-7 tbsp
How you do it:

Combine together the flour, salt and sugar. Pulse for a minute, if using a food processor. Or else blend together using a whisk.

Now add the cold butter and mix it in.

This part is easy when you have a food processor. A few minutes and you have a crumbly batter that represents bread crumbs.

If using your hand, Use your fingertips to rub the butter into the flour. Make sure there are no large lumps of butter remaining. Work quickly so that it does not become greasy. It might be slightly more time consuming to do this with your hand and a spatula. But you can get better results because your hand will not break up the butter as much as a food processor will and thereby you get a flakier crust. But lazy folks like me stick to the machines.

Next step is to add the water. Make sure your water is Very Cold. Now, add it 2 tablespoons at a time and pulse the processor until the dough forms into a ball. 6 tablespoons usually gets me there. But it might take one or two more spoons. Even when mixing by hand, add the water gradually spoon by spoon. As too much water can ruin the dough.

Once your dough has formed a rough ball. Take it out and lightly knead it with your hands to smooth it out and make it shiny. Now divide the dough into two parts and wrap them separately in cling film and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Take one of the dough balls out and roll with a lightly floured rolling pin. The rolled dough should be two to four inches more than your pie pan.

Now carefully roll it over your rolling pin and lightly lift and place and unroll on your pie pan.

Without stretching the dough, press the pastry into your pan with your fingertips. Lightly trim off the extra dough from the edges. Cover over any imperfections using the extra dough.