Easy Homemade Pie Crust Recipe
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Simple and delicious homemade pie crust recipe that is perfect for any type of pie. Flaky and delicious, this is my go to pie crust recipe.
While Im not opposed to using a premade pie crust when time is of the essence, nothing beats a homemade pie crust for creating the perfect tasting pie.
There are a number of great recipes out there, but this is the one I use the most. It produces a flaky and flavorful crust that is versatile enough to use with any type of pie.
I make this recipe for many of my holiday pies, but its also my go to crust for fresh fruit pies during the summer.
Make sure to bookmark or pin this recipe so you can find it the next time you have a fresh baked pie to make.
This recipe makes enough dough for two pie crusts. Its perfect for a single pie with a double crust or two open top pies.
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Transferring The Pie Crust To A Pie Plate
- With a bench scraper or thin spatula, loosen the dough from the working surface, starting with the edges and working your way towards the middle.
- Once the dough has completely released from the surface, place your rolling pin on one edge and start rolling the dough onto the rolling pin barrel.
- Lift the dough a bit and slide the pie dish under the dough. Unroll the dough onto the pie plate. Adjust the dough to fit so you have the same amount of overhang dough all around. Dont stretch the dough to prevent shrinkage while baking.
- Cut any excess dough off with kitchen shears or a small knife. Leave about about 1-inch of overhang in case you would like to tuck the edges as shown below.
Preventing A Tough Crust
When making the pie crust, the goal is to press or cut small pieces of fat into the flour. The butter coats some of the gluten-forming proteins, glutenin and gliadin. This process creates a moisture barrier, preventing some water absorption. Add only enough water to help the mixture stick together. Do not overmix, or it will cause too much gluten development, making the dough elastic and rigid.
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A Brush Of Butter Add Moisture And Texture
Since store-bought pie crusts have a tendency to dry out, our experts all suggest using a moistening agent to imbue the crust with texture and flavor. Wells ups the ante by adding crushed cookies: “My favorite way to up-cycle store-bought pastry is to brush it with melted butter and sprinkle over crushed cookies. I like to use buttery shortbread and a dash of cinnamon. Make sure the cookies are crushed pretty fine – a food processor works best for this. Then gently press the crumbs into the pastry surface by adding a layer of parchment paper over the top and rolling your hand over the surface a couple of times to make sure it sticks. Alternatively, you can dust your counter with the cookie crumbs and lay the pastry on top. Roll it into the crumbs just enough so it sticks.”
How To Make Flaky Pie Crust
I am very worried, friends. Worried that the fear of pie crusts may be keeping a great many of you from making your own pies at home. Is this true? Does this sound like you? Do debates over butter vs. lard or tender vs. flaky make you want to run and hide? Well, take a deep breath and grab your notebook today were going to go over how to make a pie from start to finish, one step at a time.
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Work Quickly To Keep The Ingredients Cool
One universal truth when making crusts is that you need to keep everything cool, particularly the butter. Warm butter will be absorbed by the flour instead of coating it, resulting in a tougher, less flaky crust.
Once you take the butter out of the fridge, work quickly to make the pie crust. Refrigerate the dough between each step. If you want to make a pie during hot weather, try to make it in the morning or in the evening when the temperature is a little cooler. You can also refrigerate your rolling pin and cutting board. Or just work quickly and refrigerate frequently. If youre blind baking your crust, refrigerate or freeze it as the oven preheats.
Tips From The Betty Crocker Kitchens
- tip 1 For tender, flaky crusts, choose heat-resistant glass pie plate or aluminum pie pans with a dull finish. Shiny pie pans are not recommended because they reflect heat, causing a soggy bottom crust.
- tip 2 The best way to measure flour is to first stir the flour a bit before spooning into the measuring cup. Fill until heaping and then sweep the excess off the top with the flat edge of a butter knife.
- tip 3 Pricking the bottom and side of pastry thoroughly with a fork prevents crust from puffing while baking.
- tip 4 Overworking the pastry dough will make it toughhandle it as little as possible.
- tip 5 To flute pastry, place thumb and index finger about 1 inch apart on outside of raised edge. With other index finger, push pastry toward outside, continuing around edge, repeating motion, to form decorative edge.
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Two Little Birds Bakery
This is the only Pie Crust Recipe youll ever need! Buttery, flaky, and foolproof, my easy homemade recipe is perfect every single time, thanks to a key secret ingredient. This recipe comes together quickly in the food processor, so you can have a perfect pie dough chilling in your refrigerator in a matter of minutes. Watch the how-to video for step-by-step instructions!
Pie Recipes To Explore:
If you make this recipe, Id love to see pics of your creations on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter! Hashtag them #natashaskitchen
This recipe was adapted from the Joy of Cooking and The Bon Appetit Cookbook. They are both amazing general reference books that I have had in my kitchen for years. Highly recommend!
Now go forth and make homemade pie. You can DO THIS!!
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How To Bake A Homemade Pie Crust:
Bake with filling: If you are filling your pie with something that needs to be baked then make your dough, fill, and bake it according to the directions of that recipe.
Blind baking: Otherwise you can bake the pie crust and fill it with a no-bake filling like chocolate pudding or no-bake peanut butter filling.
When blind baking your pie crust to use for a no-bake pie filling place parchment paper side then fill with dried beans or pie weights.
This will help your pie crust from rising. Another option would be placing several small holes in the bottom of the pie and around the edge to make sure it does not rise.
I used a fork and when around the entire bottom of the pie before baking it. Bake at 400 degrees for 14-15 minutes or until golden brown.
If you tried this recipe or any of my recipes I would love to hear from you, leave me a comment below. You can also connect with me on , , , and .
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Show me what you are making, tag us or use hashtag #TDOARH
Heres How You Make It
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What You Will Need
Lets talk about the ingredients first. Heres what youll need to make a blueberry pie from scratch :
Pie crust this can be homemade or store-bought. Ive talked a bit more about pie crust below. This is our favorite pie crust recipe and its the one we use to make this pie.
Blueberries these can be fresh or frozen. Frozen blueberries will need to be thawed and drained of extra juices before using to make the pie.
Sugar, lemon zest, cinnamon, and allspice these add sweetness and flavor to the pie.
Cornstarch for a thickened pie filling, we need cornstarch. Some recipes call for flour, but in our testing cornstarch seemed to work best.
Butter just a tiny bit of butter makes the filling shiny and extra delicious on top.
Egg yolk and cream these make up our egg wash, which we brush over the crust. As the pie bakes, the egg and cream make the crust turn golden and look shiny.
I love the spice from allspice and cinnamon and zing from lemon zest in this pie. We dont add too much so that the blueberries stay our star.
Pro Tip: If youre using fresh blueberries, buy berries that are plump, sweet, and juicy. You can use frozen blueberries in this recipe, just thaw and drain them before using them.
Easy Pie Crust Recipe Tips
- Keep everything cold. Making pie crust with butter has huge benefits, especially in terms of flavor. But the downside of working with butter is that it melts easily. In order to make a light and flaky crust, you want the butter to melt in the oven, not while youre making the dough or assembling the pie. My best tip for ensuring this happens is just keeping your ingredients cold. I like to take butter straight from the fridge, cut it into pats, and stick it back in the fridge while I gather the rest of the ingredients. I also use cold vinegar and ice water in the dough. In addition, its important that you dont cut the chilling time short. Make sure to refrigerate the pie dough for at least 2 hours before you roll it out!
- Fold in the water using a spatula. I find that when I add it in the food processor it gets stuck under the blade, so it doesnt evenly hydrate the dough. Folding the dough with the spatula helps create nice layers, too.
- Dont let it scare you. With this easy pie crust recipe, youll be able to make great homemade pie crust on your first try. It removes a lot of the guesswork that youd find in a traditional pie crust recipe, and it yields a dough thats pliable and easy to work with. Dont be afraid to try it! I hope you love the results, and like anything else, the more you practice making perfect pie crust, the easier it gets.
Looking for a pie recipe? Use this homemade pie dough to make my Sour Cherry Pie or this Crumble Apple Pie.
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How To Pit Cherries Without A Cherry Pitter
We have a small kitchen. That means that we only buy what we need on a weekly basis and while we would love to eat a slice of this cherry pie every night that just cant happen. So, we dont have a cherry pitter in the house. That didnt stop us, though. We just looked around and figured out two ways to pit cherries without a cherry pitter.
On the top, youll see we used a chopstick. We used the thicker round end to push the pit out of each cherry. The second option was to use a small piping tip. Place it onto the work surface then push the cherry down onto the tip the pit pops right out. Of the two, we preferred using chopsticks. Both work, but the chopsticks were a little less messy.
Recipe updated, originally posted May 2013. Since posting this in 2013, we have tweaked the recipe to be more clear and added a quick recipe video. Adam and Joanne
How To Make Homemade Pie Crust From Scratch
Prep time for this crust recipe is less than ten minutes. Then you just have to roll it out and finish baking your pie!
For equipment, you will need a mixing bowl and a hand mixer or food processor. I prefer using a hand mixer for making crust, but a food processor produces great results as well.
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Using Sweet Or Tart Cherries
As far as the cherries go, we like to use fresh cherries, but if you need to, use thawed frozen or canned/jarred cherries. . Both sweet and tart cherries will work well in this pie. We usually use sweet because fresh tart cherries are almost impossible to find where we live. No matter which you use, be sure to check for how sweet they are then adjust the sugar accordingly. We love serving each slice with freshly whipped cream, but ice cream would be divine.
What Is A Pie Shield
If you plan on baking pie, a pie shield will be your best friend. I went for years without one, scraping together aluminum foil to create a makeshift shield to prevent my pie crust from browning too much.
BUT the little handy pie shield invention is a SUPER simple tool to make sure your crust doesnt get too brown. Theyre cheap, and so worth it in my opinion!
Heres the link to the one I have if youre interested. I know they make silicone ones now, and I am sure they work great too! Just make sure youre buying the right size for the pie plate you have!
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How To Blind Bake A Pie Crust
For those of you who are making a pie that features a no-bake filling, you will want to pre-bake your crust, or blind bake it. This is super easy, lets talk about how