Grandma's Perfect Pie Crust - The Recipe Critic (2024)

FAQs

Is pie crust better with butter or Crisco? ›

“My preferred fat for pie crusts will always be butter. To me, it is all about flavor, and no other fat gives flavor to a crust like butter does. Other fats, even though they have great pros, lack flavor,” De Sa Martins said. “The more flavorful the butter, the more flavor your pie crust will have,” Huntsberger added.

Cold butter is the key to flaky crusts. Do not skip this step. You must put your butter in the freezer to get it nice and cold. Many people do not like working with frozen butter, but it makes all the difference in the world when you create your pie dough.

The acidic properties of vinegar inhibit gluten, some will say. This theory proposes that once the water and flour are combined, gluten starts forming, causing the dough to grow tough. Adding an acid, the theory goes, stops the gluten in its tracks and rescues the crust from toughness.

You're probably not adding enough water. The dough needs to be moist enough to roll out without cracking. Flour will absorb different amounts of water, depending on the humidity in the air and the age of the flour. So try adding a little more water the next time you make the dough.

Crisco. It makes the crust nice and flakey. Although I also make a "press in the pan" crust that has less saturated fat with flour, oil, and milk. It is difficult to handle though, so it doesn't work as well for a top crust.

What kind of flour makes the best pie crust? Well, not high-protein bread flour! Use that for your chewy bagels. What you want for pie is flour that yields a tender, flaky crust, which means medium-protein all-purpose flour or low-protein pastry flour.

Non-chilled crust is fairly crumbly and less smooth, which makes it harder to roll out and means it may not look as polished. It will brown more quickly and the final product will likely be tougher, heavier, and more doughy – none of those in a bad way. It will likely have a more intense, butter flavor.

Overworking the dough: One of the most common mistakes people make when making pie/tart crust is overworking the dough. This can result in a tough, chewy crust. To avoid this, handle the dough as little as possible and don't overmix the ingredients.

You do not need to pre-bake a pie crust for an apple pie or any baked fruit pie really, but we do freeze the dough to help it stay put. Pre-baking the pie crust is only required when making a custard pie OR when making a fresh fruit pie.

Why do you put vodka instead of water in a pie crust? ›

The vodka works for two reasons. First, it makes the dough feel way more moist and easier to work with. Second, the ethanol in the vodka stops the gluten in the flour from binding, making for a more tender end product.

The more fat you've got in your crust, the better it will taste and the better its texture. We use European-style cultured butter with a butterfat content of at least 83 percent. We also use whole milk instead of water—another way to inject more fat into the crust, and a key ingredient for getting it super flaky.

The 11% gluten found in all-purpose flour yields the perfect tenderness in a crust. A little acid goes a long way: Add a little acid to your dough. Whether it be fresh lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, acid retards gluten development. One teaspoon will do the job, and it can replace some of the water you add.

The pros: Butter has the best flavor. A butter pie crust forms light, lofty, flaky layers while it bakes. The flakiness comes partially from the water content of butter, which evaporates as the pie bakes and turns to steam, separating and puffing up the layers in dough.

Until recently, it was also thought to be healthier because it contains less saturated fat than butter and lard. However, we now know that highly processed shortening offers no health advantages over butter or lard and may in fact be a less nutritious choice ( 5 , 6 ).

Neither Crisco nor butter are considered inherently healthier than the other. Both should be consumed in moderation as part of a balanced diet with their differences in fat content in mind.

You could use the shortening, but it will not help the flavor at all, and doesn't have the approximately 18% water that butter and margarine do, although this usually doesn't matter in a graham cracker crust.