Flaky Pie Crust

This is my favorite pie crust recipe.  It always turns out yummy and flaky AND it make a pretty crust too. 

The Recipe

1 cup of flour

1/3 + 1 TBS of shortening

1/2 tsp. of salt

2 TBS ice water

 

How to make a beautiful and flaky pie crust

In a medium bowl mix together your first three ingredients until you have small crumbs like this.  You can use a pasty knife/fork or a dinner fork or you can use your fingers.  If you use your fingers try to use the tips of them so you don’t heat up the dough too much.  

Once you have your desired crumbs you add your 2 TBS of ice water and then form it into a pie dough disc. 

I don’t have one of those cool pie sheet things that you roll your dough out on.  BUT what I do have is a clean dish towel.  And it works AWESOME! Sprinkle some flour all over the dish towel and place your dough disc in the middle then sprinkle a little flour on your dough disc too.  Then roll your rolling pin through the flour and start to roll the dough out from the center.

Once it’s your desired size and thickness place your pie plate upside down in the middle of the dough.

Place your had underneath the dish towel until you get to the middle of the dough, then place your other hand on the back of the pie plate and flip the whole thing over.

Trim the excess dough leaving about 1/2 inch extra around the edges you can trim it with, your fingers, a knife or I like to use my kitchen sheers.

Take the edge dough and fold in under all the way around the pie.

When the edges are all finished it’s time to make them pretty.  There are a lot of different ways to do this, here are two.

The first one is the way I like to do my pie crust edges.  You pick up the edge of the dough in-between your pointer and middle finger then you push the dough with your thumb forming a scalloped edge. Repeat all the way around the pie.

The next way is to use your thumb and pointer finger to hold the dough and then use your other pointer finger to push the dough in-between them forming a scalloped edge. Repeat around the pie crust.

All finished! 

For a Double Crust

When you place your first crust in the pie tin trim your edges but don’t fold them. 

When you place the top crust on trim the edges of your top crust and then fold the top crust and the bottom crust together then do your scallops around the edges of the pie.

Add slits in the top for ventilation and add any decorations that you might want.

For a lattice  Crust

Finish your bottom crust.  For the top of your pie roll out another dough disc and use a pizza cutter to make strips of pie crust.

Then lay the pie crust strips on top of the pie forming a lattice.  They’re lots of different ways to do it.  I do it the easy way, where you  lay one piece of crust at the top then you put one on the side, then one on the top, then one on the side repeat until your finished.

If you’re making a lot of pies this holiday season I would recommend getting the Crisco baking sticks there are a lot faster and cleaner to use.