How To Make a Perfect Pie Crust

Making a delicious, flaky homemade pie crust is becoming a lost art. Many people think it is too difficult and just buy the crust from the store; this is a shame because nothing beats homemade, and the crust really is simple to make. If you have butter (or Crisco), flour and salt, you have everything you need to make a great crust.

Ingredients:

Two cups of flour (This makes two nine-inch crusts.)

2/3 cup firm butter or Crisco (I prefer butter because it has better flavor.)

1 teaspoon of salt

2 teaspoons cold water

Steps

1. Place the butter, flour and salt into a large mixing bowl.  Use a pastry cutter or fork to cut the butter into the flour until it forms pea size lumps, and butter has been thoroughly worked into flour. There will be some smaller bits and some larger. (This is good because the different size bits are what make the crust flaky.)
2. After the butter has been worked into the flour, slowly sprinkle cold water over the mixture and mix with a fork.  Use just enough water to make the mixture hold together to form a ball.
3. Place dough on floured surface.  Handle the dough as little as possible (Do not knead it as this will make it tough.)  Separate dough into two balls as this recipe makes two nine-inch crusts. The extra dough can be used for the top crust of a pie or frozen for later.
4. Place one of the balls of dough on a floured surface and gently press it into a slightly flattened, round shape. With a floured rolling pin, roll out the dough into a roughly 11-inch circle. Repeat with second ball of dough if it is needed.
5. To get the pie crust into the pan, gently roll the pie crust around the floured rolling pin, lift pin with dough and center it over the pie pan.  Gently unroll crust and place it in pan.
6. After the crust is in the pan, trim edges until the crust hangs about 1/2 inch over the edge of pan. This will give you enough dough to crimp the edges of the crust. To crimp, just roll excess dough under until it is even with the edge of the pan and press with a fork all around. if you are going to use a top crust, place pie filling in bottom crust, place dough over the top using the rolling pin method, trim excess dough, and use a fork to press upper and lower crust edges together.

That is all you have to do in order to have a tender, flaky, homemade crust. It takes just a couple of minutes, costs pennies to make, and your friends and family will worship you.