Easy All Butter Flaky Pie Crust

The leaves are turning orange and that means it’s pie season! I love pretty much every kind of pie, except custard pie, which oddly enough happens to be Mr. Insanity’s favorite pie.  I use butter in my crust and only butter, I don’t really love the flavor of Crisco (who does?) and I try and avoid it whenever possible.  I also think that butter gives the crust a better texture than a crust that has shortening in it.  I once made a butter and bacon fat pie crust, but that was impossible to work with, although it did taste AMAZING.  I welcome you to try it some day if you are a fellow bacon lover.  A warning about using just butter though, while it will taste great, and the texture is amazing, it is harder to work with than a butter/crisco combination.  You need to make sure you are keeping everything cold.  Do not, for example, try and make apple hand pies using hot filling because you will end up with a melted mess on your hands. I have learned the hard way, you can’t rush pie or hand pies for that matter.

I cube up two sticks of butter and freeze them.  I am making enough dough to make a two crust pie.  I would always make this amount even if you are making a one crust pie, you can always freeze the dough for later.  

I like to leave the butter in the freezer for at least an hour to really get it nice and cold.  This time I left it in for over a day because the insanity kicked in around here and no pies could be made.  Mr. Insanity kept opening the freezer and shaking his head at my frozen butter bowl.  So, once I have frozen butter, I pour a small glass of ice water and then I start on the crust.  I am using my food processor; you could do this by hand with a fork or a pastry cutting tool, but the food processor is what makes this an easy pie crust.  I add flour, salt, and sugar to the bowl of the processor and pulse it a few times.  I use sugar in my crust whether it is for a dessert pie or a savory pie, the crust just tastes better with a little sugar. I dump all of my frozen butter into the processor breaking up any pieces that might have frozen together.  I, or rather my helper, pulses the machine about ten times.

After those short pulses I add 5 tablespoons of ice water – just the water, no ice – to the food processor, pulsing as I add the water.  I then check the dough.  It should hold together when you squish it.

If it is still too dry to do this, keep adding water a tablespoon at a time, pulsing and then checking after each addition.  It should be crumbly looking, but once you get to the point where you can squeeze it and it holds together pour the whole mess onto a clean counter.  You want to form it into a mound and then using your palm push down on it.

Do this a couple of times and then start gathering the dough into a mound and shaping it into a disk.  This might seem frustrating, you might think it impossible, but after some work it will come together and become a disk. Wrap it up in plastic wrap and stick it into the fridge.  I let it rest in the fridge for twenty minutes, then I remove it and cut it in half.  I form both halves into disks.  Pop those back in the fridge for at least an hour.  This is keeping our butter cold, and letting our dough rest.

Once you pull your dough out again, you will be amazed to see your dough that was almost falling apart has started to hold together.  It should look like a pie dough now rather than a disk that is about to fall apart at any minute. I like to let my dough sit out of the fridge for about ten minutes before I roll it out.  Letting it warm up just a tad prevents the dough from ripping as your roll it out however, if it is a very hot day only give it five minutes of a rest we do not want our butter to start melting.