Simple Pie Crust for the Holidays
Many people find making pie crusts difficult, but it really needn’t be if you understand the principles behind pastry and don’t expect to follow a precise recipe. No recipe can give you exact proportions for pastry because your flour will vary in moisture content given its age and the relative humidity where you live. However, it is not difficult to make a great pie crusts if you understand a few simple pastry concepts and practices.
Pie crusts are short doughs, or pastries. That means that they contain mostly fat and flour, plus a little bit of water. As with any pastry, it is important to mix the fat and flour thoroughly before adding the water to help prevent the development of gluten. Gluten is a long elastic protein molecule helpful in leavened bread, but harmful in pastry. It is what gives traditional yeast breads the elasticity they need to rise, but in pastry, it makes for a tough texture. The goal of any pastry is a flakey texture, so you want to do all that you can to inhibit the production of gluten.
Here is the catch. Gluten is produced from the starches in flour by the combination of moisture and kneading. That is why we knead bread dough thoroughly, to produce nice elastic gluten to accommodate the rising process and give us the texture we expect in baked bread. Pastry, on the other hand, is meant to be flaky, not chewy, and the only way to keep it flaky is to prohibit the development of gluten. There are three principles to adhere to in order to achieve this goal:
- Mix your fat into the flour thoroughly before adding water
- Work the dough as little as possible
- Keep the dough as cold as possible throughout the process
The purpose of this approach is to coat each particle of flour with fat and prevent it from mixing with water and producing gluten. By keeping everything cold, you keep the fat in solid form and prevent the nasty consequences of oil and flour mixtures. We are not making roux!
If all that makes sense, so will the rest of this process. It is important to note that these proportions will never be exact, so you will need to pay attention to what is going on while you are mixing. Here is what you will need to make two pie crusts with tops:
- 4.5 cups of sifted flour (measured after sifting)
- 1.5 cups of butter (3 sticks), chilled, but not frozen
- Some iced water (have a cup of water in the freezer getting nice and cold, but don’t let it freeze)
- 1.5 teaspoons of salt
- A large mixing bowl
- Two pastry cutters
- A pastry scraper
- A rolling pin (non-stick is preferable, and chill it in the refrigerator)
Those are the essentials. You should also have wooden spoons, waxed paper, and a cookie sheet or two for moving things around. If your counter tops are not suitable to work on directly, you will also need a pastry mat.
First, sift your flour into a measuring cup and level it off to measure 4.5 cups of sifted flour. This is extremely important. 4.5 cups of compacted flour is more like 6 cups of sifted flour. I do the sifting by placing my measuring cup in my flour bin and sifting into it, one cup at a time. That way spilled flour goes back in the bin.
Next, cut the butter up into half-inch tabs and drop it into the flour. Then, take a pastry cutter in each hand and begin to mash the butter into the flour until you have a consistent meal-like texture. The goal here is to have all the flour particles covered in fat without overworking the mixture. Now, take the cold water and stir it in with a wooden spoon. Drip the water in carefully. You will likely need around a half a cup, but it could be significantly more or less. You know you have enough when the mixture starts forming into dough that can be kneaded into a ball.
This next part is a bit painful, but you have to knead the dough into a ball by hand and you don’t want it to warm up. Chill your hands in iced water and quickly knead the dough until you can form it into a single large ball. Wrap the ball in plastic wrap and rest it in the refrigerator for one hour.
Once the dough has rested and is thoroughly chilled, flour your counter and cut the ball in half. Now cut each half into two parts, one being 2/3 of the half and the other 1/3. The larger piece will be the bottom and the smaller is the top for each crust.
Roll each piece with your hands (chilled again) until it is round and then take one and place it on your floured counter. Roll from the middle out, keeping the piece as round as possible. Flour as necessary and flip the piece over when it is about half way done. Repeat for each piece. I generally put the bottom pieces right in the pie plates and store the tops on cookie sheets until they are needed.
That is it. It is really quite easy to make pastry if you understand the principles of short dough. Enjoy your pies and don’t forget that these principles apply to all pastry.
