A basic pie crust is actually relatively easy to make. Pie dough only requires a few ingredients, and the key ingredient is butter, lots of butter. It’s the cold butter cut into the dough that ultimately gives the resulting pie crust its crispy and flaky texture.
The recipe below is the dough I use to make my pies. It only requires flour, sugar, salt, cold butter, and cold water. The recipe makes two crusts worth of dough, and the resulting crust is crisp, buttery, and flaky. I recommend a food processor to bring the dough together. I use a pastry blade to cut the butter into the four, but a standard blade works equally well. Happy pie making!
Ingredients
2 ½ cups all purpose four
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
16 tbsp cold butter
6-8 tbsp cold water
Add the flour, sugar, and salt to a food processor. Pulse the ingredients to fully blend them together.
Ensure the butter is completely cold. Slice the butter into individual tablespoon slices, and then slice each tablespoon onto four squares. Add the cold butter to the food processor and pulse it a few times until the butter is chopped up into small, coarse crumbs (a few slightly larger pea sized crumbs mixed throughout is fine).
Add 4 tbsp of the water, and then turn the processor on to begin blending it in. Continue to add the water one tablespoon at a time while the processor is running until the dough comes together. This will be between 6 and 8 tablespoons of water. The finished dough will look like large moist sticky clumps. It will not be one uniform ball of dough in the processor. It will only take a few seconds after the last tablespoon of water to reach this texture.
Once the dough is done, dump it onto a clean cutting board or other appropriate work surface. Shape the dough into a ball, and then divide it equally into two portions. Flatten each portion into a thick disk, and wrap each disk in plastic wrap. Place them in the refrigerator to chill and rest for one hour. After one hour the dough is ready for use.
If the dough chilled for over an hour, it may have gotten a bit too stiff. Let it rest on the countertop and return to room temperature a bit. This will soften it a bit again and make it easier to roll out. The dough can be used immediately after chilling or it can be frozen and used at a later date.