|
When I'm in a hurry, I buy frozen crusts at the store just like everyone else. If I'm making a fresh fruit pie with fruit from my garden or that I picked myself, I take the time to make crusts. I'm not a big fan of pie crust in general, but homemade is better, in my opinion.
Ingredients (two-crust pie)
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 2/3 cup lard
- 1/3 cup butter
- Water
- Ice
Lard? You're Kidding, Right?
There are many variations for pie crust recipes. Generally, they're just flour, fat, and water. You can make them with Crisco, other shortening, butter, or lard. Crisco is decent in a pinch. I prefer the flavor and browning that butter gives, but lard helps make the crust really flaky. Alton Brown says it's something to do with the lard's crystalline structure and high melting point. Whatever.
Make sure the lard and the butter are very cold. Stick them in the freezer for a couple of minutes, even. Then dice them up into small cubes.
Put the flour into a big bowl. Toss in the very cold cubed fat bits. Mmm. Fat. Using a pastry cutter (ideally) or two knives, cut the fat into the flour. This means to keep chopping or cutting until the butter and lard are chopped up fine and distributed evenly, and the resultant mix looks like very coarse meal or a bowl full of flour-coated small peas.
In a small bowl (or even better, a small clean spray bottle), add some ice to very cold water, and stir until it's all very very cold. Add this water a Tablespoon at a time to the flour and fat, sprinkling it evenly over the surface. (This is why a spray bottle is nice...you can just hose down the whole surface evenly.) Stir gently with a fork to moisten the mixture. Keep adding water and stirring gently until most of the flour sticks together...usually 5-6 Tablespoons of water will do it.
DO NOT KNEAD THE DOUGH. In fact, try to make a game of touching it as little as possible. You want to keep the fat lumps cold and separate, so they will melt in the oven and create the flakiness. The more you work the dough, the harder it will get.
Wad the dough up into two balls, working just enough to get an intact ball going. Place the ball on a floured board, and sprinkle a bit more flour on top of the ball. Roll with a rolling pin to the desired circumference. If you have access to a hollow rolling pin, filling it with ice water will help keep the dough flaky. When the dough is rolled out, start at one edge and wrap it around the rolling pin, then unroll it again over the pie tin. This trick just helps keep the crust from tearing.
Roll out the second crust the same way. Fill the bottom crust with your filling according to your recipe. If you want to make fancy steam vents, you can use small cookie cutters to cut holes in the center before you apply it over the pie filling. Otherwise, you can vent it by simply slitting the crust once it's secured.
You can flute the edges to seal the pie by pinching it between your thumb and first two fingers, or you can mash it together with a fork to make hatch marks. Whatever works. Bonus points if you can be fancy...I'm not that good at it.
For a nice color, brush the top of the pie with milk, then sprinkle it with a Tablespoon of plain sugar before baking. You can also use an egg wash by brushing a beaten egg over the top of the pie, which will create a shinier crust and a darker brown color.
If you have leftover pie crust bits, you can brush them with milk and sprinkle them with sugar, and bake until golden brown for an extra treat!
| 
