Flaky Pie Crust Recipe - Tasting Table (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to a flaky crust? ›

Cold butter is the key to flaky crusts. Do not skip this step. You must put your butter in the freezer to get it nice and cold. Many people do not like working with frozen butter, but it makes all the difference in the world when you create your pie dough.

Pastry flour is softer flour. Pastry flour does not have as much gluten in it as hard flour used for bread making. This means your pastry should remain tender and flaky instead of becoming hard and chewy. Most of us just use all purpose flour which is blended hard and soft flours.

The pros: Butter has the best flavor. A butter pie crust forms light, lofty, flaky layers while it bakes. The flakiness comes partially from the water content of butter, which evaporates as the pie bakes and turns to steam, separating and puffing up the layers in dough.

“My preferred fat for pie crusts will always be butter. To me, it is all about flavor, and no other fat gives flavor to a crust like butter does. Other fats, even though they have great pros, lack flavor,” De Sa Martins said. “The more flavorful the butter, the more flavor your pie crust will have,” Huntsberger added.

But there are two much more important perks to using vinegar: it provides a little insurance against overworking the dough. And, that splash of vinegar will keep your dough from oxidizing and turning gray. Fresh All-Butter Pie Dough with vinegar (right) and without (left).

Crust dust is a 1:1 mixture of flour and granulated sugar. When baking a pie, especially a fruit pie, a couple of teaspoons of crust dust sprinkled into the bottom of the crust will help prevent the crust from becoming saturated with juicy filling as it bakes.

Tips for Making Perfect Pie Crust

Work with cold ingredients. Chilled butter and ice-cold water will help keep the dough flaky. When the crust is baked, pockets of butter release steam, creating flaky layers. Don't overwork the dough.

Tough and flaky are two different things. Tough refers to the texture of the crust and flaky refers to the air pockets that form flaky layers in the crust. In both cases, the secret is to avoid overworking the dough.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using butter in a pie crust? Advantages : excellent flavor and forms distinct flaky layers. Disadvantages: Expensive and butter melts easy bettween 82.5 and 96.8 degrees F. It takes more time to make pastry because it must be refrigerated.

How do you achieve a tender and flaky pastry dough crust? ›

The process of making a flaky pastry involves “cutting” one quarter of the total fat into the flour such as a pie dough till it forms what resembles coarse meal. Proper incorporation of the fat, in this step, provides flour lubrication and restricts or at least delays its quick absorption of added water.

The oilier the food, the more likely it will be harder when it cools, so cookies made with butter will be crisper and cookies made with lard will be chewier. You'll also find biscuits and pie crusts and pastries made with lard are truly amazing, flaky, and so light.

Start with chilled ingredients

Butter creates a sturdy, crisp pie crust. For this, it is important to keep all ingredients cold which will inhibit the development of gluten in the flour. Use butter right out of the refrigerator and add ice-cold water to make the dough.

#2—Add cold water

Before you start making the dough, fill a glass with ice and water. Add the ice water gradually to the dough, about one tablespoon or so at a time, and stop when the dough is just moist enough to hold together when a handful is squeezed.

Flaky pastry, like the one pictured here, is made by incorporating small chunks of solid butter or fat through flour (either but 'rubbing in' using your fingertips or 'cutting through' using the cutting blade of a food processor) then binding the dough with moisture from other ingredients such as water and/or eggs.

While butter, shortening, or lard make equally light and tender crusts, an all-butter crust will be flakier due to butter's higher water content: as the crust bakes the butter melts and its water turns to steam, creating thin, crisp layers (flakes).