Pie shell (aka pie crust)

Try making one at home. At the worst it’s going to be better than frozen store-bought. At best it’s going to be a delightful pastry, delicious addition to your home-baked pie. Don’t be scared. It’s going to take a few crusts before you get the feel of it, but it’s not really that challenging. Just a couple rules: Keep everything cold, cold, cold and do not handle with your hands excessively, which will warm the dough. What you want are somewhat substantial flecks of cold butter in the dough. This is what makes the pie crust flaky: when the crust hits the hot oven, the butter — which is an emulsion of fat and water — melts and creates steam. The steam creates air pockets that result in a flaky crust. That’s why you don’t use melted butter — which will not do this, and why you want substantial pieces of butter in the dough and not tiny flecks.

Go ahead and make two pie crusts at a time. This is for a double-crusted pie such as a fruit pie, or you can use for two bottom crusts. You can freeze pie dough either before you roll out into a crust, or afterwards, even in the pie dish!

Ingredients:

white flour, unbleached, 4.5 oz (1 c.)

whole wheat pastry flour, 3.4 oz, actually 3-3/8 oz (1 c.)

chilled unsalted butter, 151 g (2/3 c)

dash salt

very cold water, 6 T (refrigerated or with ice cubes added)

for sweet crusts: add a couple T sugar into the flour

Instructions:

Chill a good quantity of water in a small bowl — either in refrigerator or with ice.

Combine two flours in a small or medium bowl and add salt. Put into food processor with butter. Pulse. When butter is broken up into pea+ size, add water until dough holds together when you squeeze it.

Dump dough back into bowl and mush together with your hands. Remove and divide in half, and form into two balls, or even better, somewhat flattened thick rounds. Wrap each well in plastic wrap and chill for at least 1/2 hour before rolling out.