There is a lot of subtlety that goes into making a good pie crust, the types of intuitive moves or small tips that you learn in a professional kitchen (or by baking with an experienced relative).
Below, as well as in my book A Good Bake, I have attempted to address all of those points—from making the pie dough to baking it to perfection—so that you can apply them to make delicious and professional-looking pies, no matter what recipe you’re following.
Here’s your step-by-step guide:
1. Plan ahead.
In a professional bakery, pie dough is prepared up to several days in advance. I suggest you set yourself up the same way at home. Making the dough in advance gives the gluten time to relax, which prevents shrinkage in the crust when baked. It also ensures that the dough is properly chilled. Chilled dough with relaxed gluten will simply be easier to roll out. Also, it’s convenient to have the dough chilled and ready to roll when you go to make your pie.
You can make pie dough up to one month in advance; wrap it well, store it in the freezer, and defrost in the fridge the night before you plan to use it.
2. Start with great pie dough.
A pie is only as good as its crust. I use a few different recipes for pie crust, but my basic pie dough recipe is pâte brisée. Brisée means “broken” in French, and in this dough, the butter is “broken” into the dough, creating a layered, flaky crust. Pâte sucrée, by contrast, means “sugar dough.” It contains sugar and egg and is prepared like a cookie dough, with the butter and sugar creamed together.
3. Choose between butter and lard.
The essential ingredients in pie dough are flour, water, a pinch of salt, maybe a very small amount of sugar, and some fat. Many traditional American pie dough recipes call for lard, which is rendered pork fat and makes for a flakier crust. Lard became taboo because of health trends, although it’s currently making a comeback. I love it, but quality lard is not always easy to find, so I use good old-fashioned butter to make my pie and tart crusts. As long as you’re using the best technique to make you pie dough, you can achieve just as much flakiness and get that great buttery flavor.
4. Make sure your chunks of butter are big and cold.
Many pie recipes call for you to cut the butter into ¼" cubes. Instead, I start with sticks of butter and cut them into largish ½" chunks. After cutting the butter, I place the chunks on a plate and put them in the freezer for 10 minutes so the butter gets as cold as can be without freezing. I like to start with these larger pieces because when they are mixed in with the flour, some big chunks remain. When the dough is rolled out, those chunks form striations of butter in the dough, and when baked, the water in the butter evaporates, resulting in microscopic flaky layers—and a light, tender, flaky crust.
5. Use cold water.
Lots of recipes will call for you to add ice water to the dough. I find that cold water from my refrigerator works fine. Since I make sure that the butter is very cold, I don’t think it is necessary to add ice-cold water. That said, if you want to use super-chilled water, it certainly won’t hurt.
It’s important to understand why water is added only after the flour and butter are mixed: When the water joins the party, gluten starts to form. Gluten toughens the dough, making the finished crust heavy and solid rather than light and flakey. But by mixing the flour with cold butter before you add the water, the butter coats the proteins in the flour, thereby impeding the interaction between the water and the flour and reducing gluten development.
6. Don’t overmix.
Even if you’re tempted to mix it until it completely comes together, like cookie dough, resist. Mix it only until the dough begins to come but not all the way. When you transfer the dough to the counter, it should still be a bit crumbly and shaggy, with small, observable chunks of butter. Dry bits will hydrate in the fridge and come together when you roll out the dough.
7. Let the dough rest.
After bringing the dough together, I shape it into a round disk or brick, depending on the shape I will be rolling it out to. Then I wrap it in plastic wrap and run a rolling pin over the dough to flatten it out before putting it in the refrigerator to rest.
