Single Pie Crust Recipe
Making a single crust is just as easy as making a double crust! Most custard pies, streusel pies or meringue pies have a bottom crust only pumpkin pie is a popular example!
Tip: Only want to make a single pie crust? Simply cut the recipe for a double pie crust in half! Or make the double crust recipe and store one half of the pastry in the freezer for a later time!
Ingredients for a homemade single pie crust:
- 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Follow the steps for the double crust to make your pie pastry!
How To Tell When The Pie Is Done
Here are three simple methods for telling when apple pie is ready to come out of the oven:
Visual cue: Apple pie is done when the juices are bubbling through the vents of the top crust or lattice. If you do not see bubbles, the pie needs more time.
Internal temperature: The pie is done when an internal thermometer inserted into the middle of the pie reads 195 degrees Fahrenheit .
Texture of the apples: Piercing the pie is a good indication of how soft the apples are. If they feel too crunchy, the pie needs more time.
How To Roll And Transfer Pie Dough:
Dust work surface with flour and roll a single crust into a 12 circle. Wrap your pie dough around your rolling pin. If it sticks to the work surface use a food scraper or spatula to loosen it as you go.
Carefully transfer crust to 9 pie dish and unroll it into the pan. Gently press dough down to line the pie dish. Tuck excess dough underneath itself to make a thick double layered edge .
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More Easy Apple Recipes
Simple Apple Tart How to make a stunning apple tart with a buttery crust, thinly sliced apples, and toasted almonds.
Apple Pie Cupcakes A fun and easy apple pie cupcake recipe made with cinnamon roll dough, spiced apples and a crumble topping. How can it go wrong?
Dutch Baby Pancakes with Apples How to make the best tall, fluffy Dutch baby pancakes with tender apples. The perfect breakfast or dessert!
Easy Apple Crisp This apple crisp recipe with oats has sweet tender apples and a crisp and crunchy topping made with flour, oats, brown sugar, butter, and cinnamon.
Baked Cinnamon Apples These cinnamon baked apples are easy enough for tonight, but double as the perfect dessert for friends and family .
Creamy Apple Salad with Celery and Fennel We love this fresh and easy apple salad recipe made with crisp apples, celery, fennel, and an easy creamy dressing.
Grandmas Perfect Pie Crust Ingredient List
Simplicity is key! The best pies start out with a flaky, golden crust with no frills. This pie crust will bring your whole pie together with just pantry staples! Measurements can be found in the printable graphic or recipe card at the end of the post.
- All-Purpose Flour: All-purpose flour works great for acheiving a soft, flaky crust. It doesnt have a high protein content, so it will keep the structure nice and light. You can also use a low-protein pastry flour.
- Salt: You need a little salt to enhance the overall flavor.
- Shortening: This is needed for fat content. You can also substitute it with butter, margarine, or even coconut oil!
- Cold Water: This is used to moisten the dough. Be sure to keep it cold! Cooler temperatures is the secret to a nice and flaky pie crust.
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Homemade Buttery Flaky Pie Crust
Today Im going to teach you everything you need to know about making the perfect buttery flaky pie crust. This is the one and only pie crust recipe I use. Its been passed down through generations. Stands the test of time. Old-fashioned, yet never out of style. Wins my heart every single time.
There is nothing more satisfying than making a pie completely from scratch. From the golden crust to the juicy filling and everything in between. Pies are tasty for one reason: theyre time consuming. This shouldnt scare you! It should intrigue you. Because if you can bake an exceptional homemade pie, congratulations. Youre a talented baker.
Let me help you get there.
As the base holding all of the pies contents, pie crusts flavor is in every single bite. Start with a solid crust and youre that much closer to pie-fection. !! Today were going to explore my pie crust recipe, preparation tips, how-tos, and troubleshooting.
How To Make Homemade Cherry Pie
This cherry pie recipe is so easy All you need to do is mix, fill and bake. The hardest part is pitting the cherries. For that, you might want to buy a cherry pitter or if youre like us, cheat and use one of our suggestions below for how to pit cherries without a cherry pitter.
Stir cherries with sugar, corn starch, lemon juice, vanilla and almond extracts then stir. Roll out a pie crust , fill then top with another crust. Bake and cool. Its that easy.
To be honest, the hardest part is actually waiting for the pie to cool you really want to wait 2 to 3 hours before cutting into the pie. We know its torture!
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Use Cold Fat In Pie Crust
Why the emphasis on temperature? Keeping your pie dough as cold as possible helps prevent the fat from melting. If the butter melts inside the dough before baking, you lose the flakiness. When the lumps of fat melt in the oven as the pie bakes, their steam helps to separate the crust into multiple flaky layers as explained above. Warm fats will lend a hard, crunchy, greasy crust instead of a nice tender flaky crust.
I keep some of my butter in the freezer and transfer it to the refrigerator a few hours before beginning the crust. This way it is part frozen and very, very cold. For shortening? Just keep it in the refrigerator.
Time Tested And Easy Pie Crust
Ive tested this perfect pie crust recipe so many times over the years and know this recipe works with most pie fillings and can be made by hand fairly quickly. It always provides a flaky crust with lots of flavor that is sturdy enough for heavy pie fillings.
In other words, this is the perfect pie crust and the only recipe youll ever really need.
Heres how I make it.
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The Secret To Great Homemade Pie Crust
A little extra sugar and one egg yolk can make your pie crusts sing.
Hereâs the culinary theory behind it all: These two hacks are going to bridge a gap between pâte brisée and pâte sablée . You are adding just enough sugar and egg to get the benefit of workability in your dough, without the more intense sweetness or crisp bake of a full sablé dough, which doesnât work particularly well for double crust pies.
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A Note On Salt And Oven Temperature
It is important to note the type of salt that is called for in a recipe. I use Diamond Crystal salt throughout my recipes – if you use a different sort of kosher salt or regular table salt you will need to adjust accordingly as some salt is ‘saltier’ than others. Morton’s salt is twice as salty, so you will need half the quantity. Same goes for a regular table salt. I am working to get gram measurements throughout my recipes for salt but still getting there.
All oven temperatures are conventional unless otherwise stated. If you are baking on fan / convection, you will need to adjust the temperature. An oven thermometer is a great investment to ensure that your oven is the correct temperature.
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How To Make Homemade Pie Crust In 4 Easy Steps:
Cooks Tip: Do not add too much water or it will be sticky and difficult to roll.
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.
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How To Make The Perfect Pie Crust
Making a solid pie crust isnt difficult at all. All you need is a little love and attention to detail! Youre going to love it. Its better than anything you can get from the store!
How To Make Perfect Homemade Apple Pie
Its taken us a while to zero in on our favorite method for making apple pie, but I think weve finally nailed it. This simple recipe guarantees perfectly cooked apples surrounded with a thick gently spiced sauce. Theres no need for precooking the sauce or apples and the steps to make this pie are simple, you just need a little time.
As with all of the pie recipes on Inspired Taste, we start with this homemade pie crust. Im a stickler on this one. It has never failed us and is our go-to recipe for pumpkin pie, tarts, and other fruit pies like blueberry pie.
You can make the crust in advance. It can be refrigerated or frozen. Definitely check our pie crust recipe for our tips on making it .
As for the apples, we use a lot of them and like to use two or more varieties for the most apple-flavored pie. Ive listed some of our favorites below. It isnt a complete list, but it should give you some inspiration when shopping for your homemade pie. If you find yourself with extra apples, try making homemade applesauce!
We dont precook the apples before adding them to the crust.
Instead, we toss peeled and sliced apples with sugar, salt, and spices in a large bowl. When the apples are well coated, we set the bowl aside and let the apples sit for about an hour.
In this hour, the sugar and salt work on the apples to help them release their delicious liquid . The apples also soften quite a bit. We do this when making apple bread, too.
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How To Bake Pie Crust
Baking pie crust correctly is one of the final steps to ensure a flaky, crisp pastry case for your favorite homemade pie.
How to bake a filled pie crust
Baking a filled pie crust is easy and foolproof if you follow these steps:
1 Preheat the oven:
For the optimum result, preheat your oven well. Start it at least 15 minutes before you want to bake your pie.
2 Place a baking sheet in the oven:
Place a baking sheet in the oven as it preheats.
Placing your pie on the baking sheet thats already blazing hot will flash-cook it from the bottom, reducing the risk of a soggy bottom crust.
Pro-Tip: Place your baking sheet in the lower half of your oven pies need more heat from the bottom than the top.
3 Fill your pie right before baking
Filling the pie right before baking will ensure your pastry is still cold from the fridge AND it will keep the filling from softening the bottom crust before it can begin baking.
Make sure you get your filled pie into the oven as soon as it is ready for the best homemade pie.
4 Bake your pieHOT at first
Most pie recipes will have you bake your pie at a hotter setting for the first 15 or so minutes.
This helps to quickly set the crust, yielding a flakier and crisper result.
Turn down the temperature as stated in your recipe after 10-15 minutes. Do not open the oven to do this!
5 Watch your pie closely as it bakes
Baking pie isnt a set-it-and-forget-it kind of deal. Start monitoring your pie after 20-30 minutes in the oven.
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The Benefits Of The Food Processor Method
So that’s all very interesting, but the real question is: Why should you care? How does this make forming pie dough any easier?
It does so in two ways. First off, this method completely removes the variability of a traditional pie dough recipe. By weighing out a given amount of flour and fat, combining them together until they form a near homogeneous paste, and then adding the remaining dry flour to that paste, you are very strictly defining exactly how much flour is used for gluten formation and how much ends up coated with fat. No more trying to visually judge whether the fat is properly cut into the flour. No more adding ice water a drop at a time until a dough is formed. The dough comes out the same, every single time.
Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik
The other key advantage is that your dough becomes much more pliable. The flour-fat paste formed at the beginning is much softer and more malleable than pure butter, which means that your final dough rolls out smoothly and easily with little-to-no risk of cracking like a traditional pie crust, even without the vodka.
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