Hi, my name is GaeLynn Peterson
from Utah State University Extension in Wayne county,
and I love pie.
How many of you have gone to a restaurant to order pie,
and when you get it the crust is tough or leathery and you are so disappointed?
Well that's what I want to avoid today, so I'm going to teach you
my method of making a flaky pie crust.
Now there are many different recipes that you can use with this method;
however, the one I'm going to use today is my mother's favorite.
The one she taught me when I was a young girl.
And I've used it for many years. I've taught it to my kids.
But there are many others that will work with this same method.
Okay for this recipe, you need 3 cups sifted flour,
and 1 teaspoon of salt, so that is already in my bowl.
It's all mixed up.
Then you will add a cup and a half of shortening.
My kids call this marshmellows. I tell them not to taste it.
It doesn't look like marshmellows.
Then we will sift that with a pastry blender.
And I'm kind of surprised. these must be a thing of the past.
I tried to find one, because I left mine at home of course,
and they're useful for a lot of different things.
So you go ahead and just blend the flour, salt, and shortening.
Takes a little while to do this process.
You want them well-blended, but you don't want them to become solid mash.
You want them to turn into marbly looking texture.
And this pastry blender just cuts that shortening so well into the flour.
If you don't have a pastry blender, you can use two knives
and do them with the blades together. That's how we used to do them.
You don't want to have it turn into one big solid piece right here.
You want it to be marbly.
And this is really what adds to the flakiness of the pie crust.
If you can see the shortening and the flour in a marbling pattern
you know your pie crust is going to be flaky.
And I'll show you that when we get to that.
Okay, the next part of this recipe calls for six tablespoons of water,
one table spoon of vinegar, and one egg.
So we beat that all together.
People have asked me, do I need cold water,
do I need warm water, it really doesn't matter.
I've used warm water, I've used cold water,
it doesn't seem to make a difference.
So you will mix that in here, and this needs to be very lightly mixed.
That is another problem that makes pie crust tough,
is if it's mixed too much.
So you just mix that enough to stir the liquid into the flour and the shortening.
And this pie dough is tempermental.
Sometimes it will be too sticky, sometimes it will be too dry,
but it's very forgiving. All you do is add a little more flour if it's too sticky,
which is what mine is becoming now. But it's okay. It's just fine.
'Kay. So you don't want to mix it much, just barely.
Okay, so now the method that I'm talking about today—
let me move these out of the way—
is I use wax paper, or not wax paper, saran wrap to roll my pie dough out on.
And I don't know, some people it's a new method.
Some people have done it before, but I'm find a lot of people
have never heard of this before.
This is the way my—
well that isn't the way my mother taught me actually,
I discovered this one day because I didn't want to clean off the cupboard,
and thought there is surely a better way.
So this is what I do. You get enough dough to make your crust,
depending on what size of pan.
And I said that is just a little bit sticky, not bad,
but I'm going to put just a little bit more flour on my dough.
Not much, just a little.
And also, what makes dough stiff and tough is working it too much
and too much flour.
So this method you use very little additional flour.
So you put one layer of saran wrap on the table,
and then your dough and the another layer,
use your rolling pin, and roll it out into a nice circle.
And my one daughter—I have a daughter that makes really good pies,
in fact she may own a restaurant now, and she makes all the pies.
When she was a little girl, she put six tablespoons vinegar, one tablespoon water.
We could smell that pie crust before we even had to taste it
to know there was something wrong there.
Okay and what's really handy with this is you don't have to handle it,
move it back and forth in your hands.
That just comes right off.
Now I don't know if you can get a close up of that,
but you can see how the marbling is in that dough.
Can you see the different marbling effect that that has?
So that's going to be a flaky crust.
And all you have to do is just pick up that other piece
and put it in your pie pan.
Peel that back.
I've used those time and time again.
When you first do it with your saran wrap, the very first pie crust you make in it
it's a little sticky, so I add a little more flour
but by the time you've made two or three, it comes off very easily.
A lot of people us a knife to do this. I usually just do it with my fingers.
Pull it off.
And today we're going to make an apple pie.
And off course I've cleaned off my surface really well before I do this.
And this apple pie mixture actually comes from the blue book.
The recipe for apple pie filling out of the blue book.
So if you want to look that recipe, it's a really good one.
And this time I froze it instead of bottling it.
When I was a young girl, we had what we call a haycrew.
We worked on a farm, and when it was time put the hay up in the bales,
we didn't have the equipment like they have today,
so you hired a crew, and part of paying that crew to come and help was
you feed them the noon meal, which we called dinner then.
And we had to make lots of pies to feed those haymen.
This particular recipe that I just gave you makes five single layers,
so you could do five one crust pies or two two crusts and a single.
Now at this point you can use about anything you'd like to help
brown the crust.
What I'm using today is just egg. A lot of people use egg and oil.
Some people use milk and sprinkle sugar,
cinnamon and sugar especially as an apple pie.
Today I'm just going to use a beaten egg.
And I do this part just with my hands.
You can use a pastry brush.
I kinda like to do this so I can get in all the cracks and crevices
and make it smooth.
Covering for that pie.
This helps to give it a golden look.
And I just use scissors to cut the little vent holes.
So I just stick my scissors in as I'm bringing it up,
I snip it.
Sometimes they're really pretty, sometimes they're kinda saggy.
And then for the final touch I do a little fluting edge.
One finger is straight, the other two are bent and just pinch it.
You can kind of see the flute lamp, I've had people order pies right from me.
So there you go, ready to go into the oven and that is what will make
a flaky pie crust.
So now the pie is ready to be put in a 350° oven.
Bake it for close to an hour.
Just check it and see when it's yummy and ready to eat.