When I started asking readers of the blog to post pastry questions, the most common one, far and away, was about piecrusts. It seems that everybody is somehow puzzled by why their recipes don’t produce the perfect piecrusts of memory. So this post is meant to go into great detail about the recipe and technique I use to produce piecrusts.

I like my piecrust browned and flaky with a slight crunch on the exterior. Once I slice into a pie or tart, I take great pleasure in seeing thin layers of dough alternating with pockets of air creating a lightness of texture and a delightful crackle when a forkful enters the mouth.

Ingredients
6 oz. cold butter
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
4 to 5 tablespoons ice water
[EDIT:I have recently changed the quantities from the original post. Though the proportions were correct, the recipe yielded too much dough.]

Choosing a Pie Crust Shortening
I favor high fat butter over shortening, lard or oil. I think most bakers will agree that butter provides the most flavorful crust. But there is quite a bit of disagreement about what fat creates the most desirable texture. The texture results from a combination of the method used to incorporate the fat and the type of fat or combinations of fat used. So many bakers will use lard, oil, or vegetable shortening (though this fallen out of favor because of the high percentage of trans fats) instead of butter because butter melts at much lower temperatures which means that, badly made, a piecrust using butter may well have a greasy, non-flaky texture, which is definitely undesirable. Last November, Melissa Clark published a wonderfully comprehensive article in the New York Times that covered many of the various options in terms of which fat to choose for a pie crust; you can find the article on her website.

In order to create a pie dough that is flavorful and tender but flaky, I work cold butter into the dough very carefully. Once the butter is incorporated, it is stacked thinly in pockets between layers of gently worked flour and water. The finished crust should be chilled before it goes into the oven. As this type of crust bakes, the flour and water layers set or gel, trapping the fat in sealed pockets. Steam develops in these sealed cells and they expand, creating an aerated pocket and a flaky texture in the finished crust.

In this recipe I use water as my liquid instead of egg yolks, cream, sour cream, or cream cheese. Water allows for the most gluten formation (the strengthening of flour protein once a liquid is added and incorporated), which does not mean the dough will be tough or chewy, but it does enhance the flaky air pockets and the slight crunch in the mouth. Egg yolks, and cream add more fat to the flour, preventing gluten formation and tenderizing and softening the final product. Sour cream and cream cheese are similar to egg yolks and cream but they also contain acid which prevents gluten formation even more, creating a very tender dough.

What lard and shortening lack in flavor, they make up for by creating a fine flaky, delicate texture. The more you coat the flour with fat the more tender it will be. Lard and shortening do not melt at room temperature and therefore can be worked into dough for longer periods and into finer particles without melting, creating a much softer and more delicate crust (since there are much smaller air pockets and very little gluten formation in the dough). On the other hand, if you use butter, the more you work butter into smaller pieces the warmer it becomes, and it is likely to melt into the flour, losing its ability to steam in the oven, and resulting in an overall toughening of the crust.

Method

In a chilled stainless-steel mixing bowl, toss together the flour, sugar, and salt. Cut the cold butter into 1/4 inch cubes and add it to the flour mixture. Using two knives, a pastry blender or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, chop and toss the butter until all the chunks are coated in flour and smashed up a bit. Do not keep cutting and tossing the butter so that the butter chunks all become pea sized. The butter chunks should mostly remain a bit larger than peas and vary in size, ranging from lima bean size to pea size, as in this photo:

Add 4 to 5 tablespoons of ice water and toss the mixture in the bowl with a fork, or allow the paddle to rotate a few turns. The dough should not come together at this point. It should seem almost too dry to do so:

Scrape out the contents of the bowl onto a marble slab, a stone countertop or a large wooden board:

Using the heel of your hand, smear the butter with the dry ingredients to marble the butter into the flour-water mixture:

Begin with one section of the dough and work your way through all of it. Repeat this process a second time, coaxing the flour clumps into the butter chunks. The mixture should now come together like dough, but the butter streaks should be clearly visible. You might need to repeat the smearing process one more time:

Gather the dough into a mound and transfer it onto a piece of plastic wrap or wax paper:

Wrap the clump of dough tightly with the paper and fold it over the top of the dough:

Press down on the plastic or paper, forming a disc of dough:

Chill the dough for two hours. Have your pie filling fully prepared before you roll your dough.

This makes enough dough for a covered 9” pie. Divide the dough in half. Using a rolling pin, with two grip pins at either end, roll the dough back and forth until it doubles in size. Pick the dough up and sprinkle flour underneath to prevent sticking and rotate the dough ninety degrees. Roll it again until it again doubles in size. If you find that the dough sticks to the rolling surface or your rolling pin, you can try rolling the dough between two pieces of parchment paper or wax paper.

When the dough is rolled out to the size needed, dust off any excess flour with a dry brush. To transfer the dough to the pie plate, you can fold it into four quadrants like a napkin or drape it over your rolling pin and roll the dough around the pin:

Unroll the dough over the pie plate or unfold the napkin of dough, placing the folded corner in the center of the pie plate. With a kitchen scissors, trim the dough around the dish leaving a one inch overhang.

Set the lined pie dish aside and roll your second piece. Follow the same guidelines as above. Once the dough is rolled out to the correct size, you can add your filling to the pie dish lined with dough. Follow the directions above to transfer the second piece of dough to the pie dish. Trim the top piece of dough so that it is just a bit smaller than the first dough that lines the dish. Wrap or fold the bottom piece over the top one resting on the rim of the pie plate, and pinch the dough together on the rim of the dish. You will create a decorative pattern by simply pressing down with your two index fingers 1/4” apart. Keep moving your fingers clockwise around the rim of the pie plate, sealing the dough and creating a visual pattern of indentations and peaks. Chill the pie in the refrigerator for 15 minutes before baking. Before placing the pie in a hot oven, using a sharp paring knife, make some steam holes in the shape of an “x” with slits one inch in length in the center of the top crust. Using a pastry brush, paint the top crust with an egg white wash and sprinkle it with two tablespoons of granulated sugar (with 1/4 tsp. of cinnamon mixed in if you like cinnamon). Bake according to the pie recipes instructions.

For any sort of raw filling, bake the pie at 400º F on the bottom shelf of a fan-less oven for 30 minutes. Turn the oven down to 350 º F and bake for another 30-60 minutes. The filling should be bubbling. The crust should be brown. And some juices might be drizzling out of the steam slits.

Here’s a question from Kristine:

“Hi. I am a pastry chef and I love your new book! I was wondering how you make the warm creme brulee filling the brown butter, vanilla, and almond cake? How do you get the filling in the cake and how is it warmed for service?

Thanks so much for all your great recipes!”

Thanks for the kind words, Kristine! As I say on page 37, I make this cake at the restaurant in individual molds, served warm with creme brulee filling. Here’s how I do it.

Prepare the creme brulee base from the Prune Armagnac Creme Brulee recipe on page 89 without the prunes, but do not bake as described. Instead, bake the creme brulee base in a rectangular pan inside of a larger pan with a water bath. Once the custard is set, take the pan of custard out of the water bath and allow to cool. Once it’s cool, freeze the custard in the pan. 24 hours later, run hot water around the pan, releasing the block of frozen custard from the pan. Depending on the size of the cakes you’re making, cut the custard into squares that will inside the metal cake ring molds you will be using for the cakes. Then freeze the squares again until you are ready to bake the cakes.

In addition to preparing this recipe, make the Sweet Tart Shell recipe on page 15 of the book. Roll the dough out and punch out circles a little bit larger than the size of your cake molds. Bake the circles until they begin to brown. While the circles are in the oven, spray your cake molds well with Pam. Remove the circles of dough from the oven and, while the dough is still hot, press each metal cake ring mold onto a circle so that the bottom of the cake mold is filled with a perfect circle of prebaked dough.

Prepare the Brown Butter, Vanilla and Almond Cake recipe on page 37. Instead of baking as described, pipe the cake batter into the ring molds, filling them half way. Press one frozen cube of creme brulee into each mold, pushing them down as far as you can. Pipe a drop of cake batter over the top to conceal the frozen custard.

Bake at 350 in a convection oven until the cakes are browned and risen. Allow them to cool, remove them from the metal molds and reheat to serve.

Let me know if you have any further questions!

Here’s a question from Suzanne about how to measure flour:

“Can you advise if flour for cookies and cakes should be measured by the dip and sweep, or spoon and sweep method? I do have a scale at home so if you have a gram or ounce measurement that you routinely use for one cup of flour then I would use that.”

I’ve done all the measurements in the book via the dip and sweep method. I decided to convert all my recipes to home measurements as opposed to weighed measures, since most home cooks don’t have a scale at hand. All the recipes were tested in small amounts using cups and teaspoons.

Thanks for the question, Suzanne!

If you have a question about desserts, about pastry technique, about the science of the pastry kitchen, about a recipe you’re making that’s not coming out the way you want, write me at kate AT katezuckerman DOT com. I’ll try to help you by answering your question in an upcoming post.