Everyone needs to know how to make an all butter pie crust and I have got you covered here! There are few ingredients but quite a few steps here, only because I wanted you to feel like you got this!! I give some good tips and try to cover everything so you’ll get a great crust every time.
Pie crust is just pure love in the form of flour butter salt and water. It’s so simple but can be so very versatile. Depending on how it’s mixed or cut into the flour, you can achieve an array of crust styles.
Growing up we ate it cut into strips and baked up flakey and golden and served fresh macerated fruit over it. So delicious!! However you plan to use your Pie Crust, I know you’ll love this one.
My recipe uses all butter for the fat in the dough. Some recipes call for lard or oil but I prefer to keep it nice and buttery. It gets folded and surrounded into the pie dough. When the hot oven hits the cold butter pieces in the dough, they burst and create all that flakey goodness we love. Butter just can’t be beat!
Ive got a few things for you to remember when mixing your pie dough:
Keep everything COLD! If you like to use a pastry cutter to get the butter into the flour, keep your pastry cutter in the freezer for a bit before using it. Stick your bowl in there too, whatever you are using keep it cold! Hands too!
Another tip I’ve learned, is when your rolling out your dough, turn your disk on the counter after every two rolls with your rolling pin. This will keep it from sticking to your surface and you won’t have to continually use more flour. More flour means tougher, dryer dough.
Moving your pie dough from counter to pie plate is easily done by using the rolling pin. Just let the pie dough fold over the rolling pin from one end and pick your dough up using the pin, placing it down into your pie plate of choice!
This recipe is for a rough puff style pie crust which involves a few folds for a modified lamination process. If you prefer a more traditional mealy crust, omit the folding (steps 13-15) and your ready to get rolling!
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All Butter Pie Crust
Equipment
- Pie Plate or Pan
Ingredients
Pie Dough
- 1 1/3 cup AP Flour Spooned and leveled + more for counter
- 1 tsp Salt I use himalayan pink salt
- 1/2 cup Butter Frozen
- 1/3 – 1/2 cup Iced Water + more as needed
Egg Wash
- 1 egg optional
- 1 Tbsp Milk, HWC, or 1/2&1/2 optional
Instructions
- First things first, grab your stick of butter and cut into small cubes. Place it in the freezer.
- Now get all your utensils out. If you use a bench scraper or a pastry cutter pop those in the freezer. If your hands are hot, run them under cold water for a bit to cool off. JUST KEEP IT ALL COLD!
- Now measure out your water and some ice and pop that into your regrigerator until needed.
- In a large bowl, mix flour and salt.
- Now its time to incorporate your butter into your flour. If you are using your hands, add small cubes of butter into your bowl of flour coating each cube completely with flour. One by one smash butter cubes between your fingers into flattened pieces of butter. Keep each piece coated with flour, tossing as you go. Once each butter cube is now a flattened shard, continue tossing and pinching with the flour until you reach medium, pea-sized pieces.
- If using a pastry cutter, mash and clean off cutter on repeat until butter is combined with flour. Continue until butter pieces are medium, pea-sized. See photos above for reference.
- Grab your water, Start with 1/3 cup poured directly into your flour butter mix. Start mixing by turning your bowl with one hand and folding the dry flour mix into your iced water. Continue turning until a dough starts to come together, adding more water as needed.
- Once dough starts to clump together with the water you can gently press your dough a bit to get it to come together, but be sure not to overwork it.
- CONFESSION, I DONT MEASURE MY WATER ANYMORE. The trick is to get to know what good pie dough feels like when its properly moisturized. I add water as needed and then stop once i can pick it all up into one big clump. The more you do it the better you will get at it. Promise.
- Once you have your flour butter mix properly moisturized into one big dough clump, wrap it in cling wrap and place in the refrigerator for 30 min.
- Grab pie dough from fridge and gently roll your ball of dough before you unwrap it. This will help it come together a bit.
- Lightly flour your surface and place your dough in the center. Using a large rolling pin, start in the center and gently roll your dough out to start forming a shape. Roll from the center of the pile outward to keep tension even. Turn your dough on the counter after ever couple of rolls to keep it from sticking and to keep from adding too much flour. If it falls apart a bit around the sides just tap that back into the rest. Roll dough into an 8 inch block shape, doesnt have to be perfect.
- Using a bench scraper, pick one half of the dough up and fold it over on itself. Fold in half again.
- Lightly four surface if neeed and working quickly, repeat the rolling process and folding process one more time. Wrap dough and place back in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
- Repeat the rolling and folding process two more times and chill for another 30 minutes.
- Roll your chilled dough out into a large circular shape. Using your pie pan as a guide cut a circle 2 inches larger than your pie pan.
- Using your rolling pin, move dough over into your pie pan and fold the edges under itself into the pan.
- If your dough is still cold, go ahead and crimp or pinch your crust edges around the pie. (If your dough is too warm already, pop it in the freezer for 5 minutes before finishing edges.)
- Using a fork, poke holes all over the bottom of the pie plate to keep it from rising too much during bake time, and place pie pan in refrigerator while you preheat your oven to 425 degrees F.
- Grab chiled pie pan from regrigerator and cover in parchment. Fill parchment with pie weights and bake for 18 minutes.
- Using parchment paper to lift out, gently romove pie weights from shell.
- If using, wisk together egg wash and brush on pie crust shell.
- If par-baking, place pie shell back in oven for 3 more minutes.
- If blind-baling, place pie shell back in oven for 15 more minutes or until golden on the inside and edges are dark golden.
- Ready for use!
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