Best Ever Pie Crust

How to Make the Best Ever Pie Crust

For Flaky Pie Crust, Keep Everything COLD, Especially Your Butter

If your kitchen is above 73°F, you can refrigerate all of your ingredients and equipment including your bowl, rolling pin, and pie plate until it’s between 65-70°F (dip an instant-read thermometer into your flour to gauge the temperature). If it’s a hot day, or you have hot hands, you’re probably better off making your pie dough in a food processor.

If your kitchen is warm, fill freezer bags with ice and a little water and set them on your work surface for 10 minutes to chill it before rolling out your pie dough. This will prevent the butter from becoming greasy as you work with the dough.

Pea-Sized vs. Large Chunks of Butter in Pie Dough

• The general rule of thumb is that smaller pieces of butter will result in a more mealy textured crust that holds up better to custard fillings.
• Larger chunks of butter will yield a flakier crust better suited for fruit fillings. Larger chunks also run the risk of creating pools of butter as your pie dough bakes.
• Overall, the differences can look relatively minor from a visual perspective once the crusts are baked.
• If you don’t have a ton of pie dough experience or confidence, I’d recommend small pieces of butter. It makes the dough much easier to work with!
• Take a look at what a difference it makes to use pea-sized vs. large chunks of butter in pie crust:

Cut the Butter Into Small Uniform Pieces

It should take just a couple of minutes to cut the butter into the flour mixture so you don’t risk the butter getting too hot. For this reason, it’s helpful to start out with pieces of butter that are already small in size. I’ve included several options for processing the butter below. My personal favorite is to grate it like cheese!

Method 1: Grater or Knife

Take your butter and freeze it for about 10 minutes, or until it’s super cold and firm. Using the large holes on a grater, literally grate the butter like cheese. If you have it, you can use the grater attachment on your food processor, but otherwise use the large holes on a box grater. Return the grated butter to the freezer for another 10 minutes until it’s firm before adding into the flour mixture.

If you don’t have a box grater, freeze your butter for even longer, until firm, then use a sharp knife or bench scraper to slice it into chunks.

Working quickly, use your hands to further cut and break the butter into pieces the size of small peas. You can also use a pastry cutter/blender or two knives.

Method 2: Food Processor
Since I live in Phoenix where temperatures often exceed 85°F, I typically use a food processor to make pie dough. It’s quick, easy, and prevents the butter from warming up too much. Cube your sticks of butter with a bench scraper and freeze until firm. Add into the dry ingredients in the bowl of the food processor with the butter and pulse until the butter is the size of peas.

You want the butter to end up the size of little peas. This will help bring the dough together cohesively without overworking it.

Overworking the pie dough develops more gluten, which can make the baked crust tough and dense instead of light and flaky. This can also cause the crust to shrink while it’s baking. Additionally, overworking the dough with your hands can start to melt the butter, preventing that flaky texture from forming.

Creating pea-sized bits of butter will also prevent the butter from pooling into greasy puddles as the pie bakes. I used to use larger chunks of butter and would encounter these grease pools too often, so I’ve scaled back to much smaller pieces.

How Much Water to Use For Pie Dough?

This is one of the trickiest parts of making pie dough. The reason is that many factors affect how much ice water you’ll need to add, such as the climate and humidity of your kitchen and the brand of flour you’re using. That’s why the recipe calls for a range of water. Add half of the total amount to start with. Toss it in to combine either by hand or with a few pulses of the food processor.

Pick up a piece of the mixture and pinch it between your fingers. It should hold its shape. If it crumbles away or seems really floury and dry, then you need to add more water.

At this point, I like to turn the mixture out onto a work surface and begin pressing it together into one messy lump of dough. Doing so will give you a better indication if you need to add more water.

The dough won’t look like much at first. It’ll be kind of craggly and messy looking, and that’s okay.

Once you have a fairly cohesive mound of dough, flatten it into a disk and fold it onto itself, kneading gently as you work.

Do this a couple of times to ‘laminate’ the dough. Every fold will give you more flaky layers. Just be careful to be gentle and work the dough only until it comes together into a smooth cohesive disk like this:

If you were to cut the mass in half, such as for a double-crust pie, you can visibly see the layers of butter thanks to that extra folding step. These layers are going to bake into crispy, tender, flaky goodness:

Give the Dough a Rest

If you have problems with your crusts shrinking while baking OR if your crust becomes tough, then it needs more time to rest so the gluten can relax so it doesn’t snap back to its original smaller shape. I’ve included these resting periods in the recipe directions.

After mixing it: wrap it in plastic and refrigerate overnight. You can shorten this to a few hours if you must, but I find overnight really makes a difference in preventing classic pie issues.
After rolling it out: let it rest in the fridge after you’ve rolled it out and placed it in the pie dish and/or after you’ve assembled. Do NOT stretch the dough to fit into the tin, as it will snap back like a rubber band while baking.

Now let’s move on to the other area of pie crust that I think frustrates a lot of people.

How to Roll Out Pie Dough

I typically roll out my dough on a marble pastry board, but that is totally optional. You can use the trick I mentioned above of icing down your counter before rolling to help keep things nice and cool. Avoid overworking the dough as you roll it out. Keep the dough moving on a lightly floured surface so you don’t roll over the same areas repeatedly, making it tough.

You’ll want about a 12-inch diameter for a 9-inch pie pan. Some pans are deeper than others, so factor that into your rolling. Whatever you do, make sure the thickness is about 1/8-inch for your pie crusts. Thinner will result in rips and tears. Thicker and it won’t cook through and get flaky.

Flour your work surface, the dough itself, and your rolling pin throughout the process as needed. There are two inexpensive tools that I find are both a MUST when it comes to rolling out pie dough: a flour shaker and a bench scraper.

The flour shaker allows you to easily add flour wherever sticking might be happening. The bench scraper allows you to easily keep the dough moving as you roll it out, which is essential. I keep the dough moving in quarter-turns to prevent sticking and to keep it an even thickness.

Alternatively, you can roll the pie dough out between two sheets of parchment paper or plastic wrap. I find that most non-commercial paper and plastic wrap isn’t big enough to accommodate a 12- to 14-inch diameter circle, so I don’t often use this method.

If at any point the butter begins to get melty and sticky, return the dough to the fridge immediately.

Use your fingers to flute the edges of the pan if you wish. I find that I need to make a more dramatic flute than I might think since the design will loosen during baking. Whatever you do, don’t make the flute too thick and heavy, otherwise it’ll slump down the sides.

More Dough Than Other Recipes?

You might notice in the recipe below that I call for more ingredients than other recipes. This is because I think it’s easier to work with dough when you have a little more than you may need. It comes together more cohesively and if you get any rips, tears, or make any mistakes with a design, you have extra.

This especially comes in handy if you have a deeper pie dish or if you want to get fancy with any designs.

Pie Crust: Butter vs. Shortening?

I’ve done an extensive amount of testing on pie crust. Let’s just say my kitchen has seen a LOT of butter. I made the messes and did the testing so you don’t have to. Here’s what I learned.

When it comes to pie dough, I’ve heard a lot of confusing and conflicting opinions about which is the better fat. If you’re curious, you can learn more about the general differences between butter and shortening here. But I actually tested the two fats in pie crust side-by-side to compare. I still need to do testing with lard, so stay tuned for that!

Shortening

All-shortening dough can be easier to work with in one sense because unlike butter, shortening requires less chilling time. Shortening has a higher melting temperature than butter. However, this also means that unlike the very hard chunks of cold butter that remain in the control dough, shortening is soft enough that it is easily overworked, resulting in a crumbly crust instead of a flaky crust. In our blind-baked shortening crust, the parchment paper holding the pie weights actually stuck to the crust, pulling some of it off with it.

As you can see in the photograph, the all-shortening dough ended up being flat, tender, and fairly crumbly. The texture was actually reminiscent of shortbread, and it was completely lacking in flavor. In fact, the flavor reminded me of store-bought dough.

Butter

In this all-butter dough, there were plenty of visible chunks of butter studded throughout. Once it came together and was chilled, it was a bit of a challenge to maintain that perfect temperature where it’s warm enough to shape but cold enough that the butter doesn’t melt. Especially for me living in the desert. The extra effort paid off immensely, though. This pie crust was ridiculously light, flaky, and loaded with rich buttery flavor. You could immediately tell this was homemade, in the best way. This is why I almost always prefer a 100% butter pie crust.

If you like the benefits of shortening, then I’d recommend a 50-50 ratio of butter and shortening to get the best of both worlds.

Other Pie Crust “Tricks” Put to the Test

Vodka in Pie Crust?

A few reputable sources have claimed that by substituting a portion of the water with vodka in a pie crust recipe, you prohibit gluten development and therefore ensure a tender, flaky crust. I tested this against my standard pie crust recipe and found the differences to be slight. I don’t think it’s worth the extra effort if you don’t have chilled vodka on hand.

Optional SECRET Ingredient!!

As you can see, I’ve done a lot of side-by-side testing of pie crust variations. Most of the time the classic recipe has won out, with a single exception: SOUR CREAM!

Sour cream acts as a tenderizer in baked goods, and I was curious to see if it would significantly affect the texture of pie crust.

• I added 2 tablespoons of sour cream to my standard single recipe along with the butter.
• This dough was very soft and slightly sticky, but easy enough to work with.
• The texture was ultra-light, puffy, and flaky, almost like puff pastry.
• This pie crust puffed up to a surprising height.
• If you have sour cream handy, I definitely suggest giving it a shot.

How to Add Sour Cream

Add in 2 tablespoons to the single recipe below, and reduce the water by about 2 tablespoons, or as needed.

Can you Make Pie Dough Ahead of Time?

Yes! Here are your options:

1. Chilling the dough disk: Pastry dough can be shaped into a disc and refrigerated for up to 3 days, as long as it’s well wrapped in plastic.

2. Chilling the unbaked pie shells: Refrigerate for up to 3 days. Simply roll out your dough, lay it into your pie tin, crimp the edges, and cover loosely with plastic wrap. When ready, simply remove from the fridge, fill, and bake. This works perfectly for single-crust pies like pumpkin or sweet potato. 

3. Freezing dough: Pastry dough can also be shaped into a disc and frozen for up to 2 months, well wrapped in plastic, and placed in a freezer bag or airtight container. Defrost in the fridge overnight before rolling out.

4. Freezing pie shells: Unbaked pie shells can also be covered and frozen for up to 2 months. No thawing necessary.

How to Bake Pie Dough

I’ve included instructions on how to blind-bake the crust for recipes that require an already-baked crust. Otherwise, just follow the directions in the pie recipe you’re following for baking the crust – or, check out my full article on How to Blind Bake Pie Crust here!

The Best Pie Pan for the Best Pie Crust

The material of your pie pan can make a big difference in how your pie bakes. I recently used this Best Ever Pie Crust recipe to experiment with different pie pans, to determine which pie pan is best. Check out my Best Pie Pan article here to see my side-by-side experiments using glass, ceramic, metal, and disposable pie pans, and learn which pie pans I recommend. 

Expert Tip!

Place your pie pan on a rimmed baking sheet before putting in the oven. This helps you to remove the pie tin without damaging the crust with your oven mitts. Better yet? Place the sheet on a BAKING STONE to ensure a golden crispy bottom crust and avoid any sogginess.