Today on The Stay At Home Chef I'm showing you how to make a
Fool Proof Pie Crust
Making pie crust doesn't have to be complicated. Today I'm showing you
everything you need to know to make a perfectly flaky pie crust. To start
you'll need 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, 2 tablespoons of sugar
and 1 teaspoon of salt. We're gonna give this a quick stir
Next it's time to add in your fats. I'm using a combination of shortening and butter
Shortening makes for the flakiest crust but butter makes for the best flavor so
I use a combination of both And on the shortening I'm using butter-flavored shortening.
Now both the butter and the shortening needs to be super cold so
you'll want to pop it in the fridge or freezer before you cut it. I'm gonna dice
it into little pieces. You'll need 3/4 cup total
of unsalted butter that's cold and cubed. Then for the shortening I'm just
gonna take a knife and plop out little bits of that cold shortening that I've
had in the freezer for about 20 minutes. Next you'll grab a pastry cutter and cut
all of that butter and shortening in with the flour. Just rock the pastry
cutter back and forth. You can also do this in a food processor and I'll
include those instructions on my website. The idea is to cut the fat into little
tiny pieces. We're gonna keep on going until this mixture resembles a coarse
meal or sand. The idea is that you don't want to end up with any large chunks of
butter or shortening. Next you'll need 1/2 cup of cold water but if you want
the best flakiest fool proof pie crust you'll want to replace half of that
water with vodka. When you add water to flour gluten starts to form but if you
replace half of it with vodka, vodka does not interact with gluten in the same way
Alcohol doesn't form the same sort of gluten. You're able to roll and
re-roll your pie crust without having to worry that'll become tough and chewy
You could also use other high-proof alcohol like bourbon or brandy if it suits your pie
Those will add a little bit of flavor. The vodka however adds no flavor
All of the alcohol burns off. It just leaves you with a flaky crust. I've got
my super cold mixture of vodka and water and I'm going to pour it in
1 tablespoon at a time and slowly work in and stir all that
liquid in with our pie crust. As you get towards the end here the dough will
slowly just start coming together so that if you press it it will stick
together and at that point I'm going to turn this out onto a clean countertop
and gently press this together into a dough ball and before you get too far into this
this recipe makes 2 pie crusts so you'll want to divide it in half and
form each one into its own ball as it just barely sticks together. hen place
each dough ball onto a piece of plastic wrap and flatten it into a circular disk
Then we'll wrap it up tightly with plastic wrap. You can freeze these for
later use but if you want to use them right away they need to go in the fridge
for at least 1 hour to chill. Next I'm going to show you how to pre bake a pie crust
Sprinkle a little bit of flour onto my clean countertop then I'll take
my chilled dough and place it in that flour and I turn mine over so it gets a little bit
of flour coating on the outside and we're gonna start rolling this into a circle
A standard pie plate is 9 inches in diameter so you want to roll your
crust 3 inches in addition to that. So we're gonna roll this into a 12 inch circle.
This recipe is for 2 standard 9-inch pie plates. If you're using a
deep-dish crust you'll need to use more of the dough for that bottom crust.
Make sure you use enough flour so that the dough doesn't stick because then we're
gonna roll this onto our rolling pin and then transfer it to our pie plate. If you
have too much hanging over the edge you can trim it with kitchen scissors or you
can roll it up and start pinching out a design. Now a fluted design is probably
the most common and popular so what you do is you just take your fingers and
press like so around the edges just keep going in a pattern around the entire
edge of the pie. Then we have a perfect foolproof pie crust that's ready for pie filling
and ready to bake but if your recipe calls for a pre-baked pie crust
there's something you want to do in order to prevent the crust from slipping
off and sliding down into the bottom of the pie plate. You'll want to put in a
little piece of parchment paper and then fill it with either pie weights like I'm
using or you can use dry rice or dry uncooked beans. This will keep your pie
in place for a pie with a filling. You'll just follow those instructions for how
long it needs to bake but for an unbaked pie crust you'll bake this in a 400
degree oven for 12 to 15 minutes and that's it! Perfect pie crust!
Thanks for watching!
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