Daikon's Easy Pie and Pastry Crust

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   From Daikon: 

 You can find this same recipe lots of places online, with slight variations in pictures, tips, etc. 

enough for a double-crust 10" pie

2-1/2 cups AP flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar (optional if you are making a savory pie; you can use a little more if you want a sweet crust)
2 sticks (1 cup) very cold butter cut into cubes

All of that into your food processor with the normal blade.  Pulse until the mixture is mostly like coarse meal, but with some pea-sized chunks of butter left.  Don't go too far at this stage since you're going to do some more pulsing as you add the water.

1/4 cup ice-cold water

Add it in about 4 dribbles, pulsing for a couple of seconds between each dribble.  Stop when the dough is wet enough to hold together when squeezed.  It'll still look crumbly, but that is the way it is supposed to be.  If a squeeze won't keep a handful together, keep adding cold water a tablespoon at a time until it does hold after a squeeze.  Pulse with each addition of water, but don't overdo it.  You want something that looks crumbly and like coarse sand, with identifiable flecks of butter, not a smooth dough.

Divide in half onto two sheets of plastic wrap.  Gather them up into snug, plastic-wrapped balls, then flatten them into thick discs (gives you a head start on rolling them out when the dough is cold and stiff.)  Stick 'em in the fridge for at least an hour.  When you take them out, you'll be amazed that that little bit of water has manage to completely wet out the flour so that you now have a workable dough -- not that you want to work it!  Go easy on it to keep it tender (but you can beat on it with your rolling pin if it is really stiff just out of the fridge.) Keep it cool as you roll it out on a lightly-floured surface -- you don't want the butter to start melting before it goes in the oven.  A little bit of cracking is fine -- you can patch with extra pieces of dough either as you are rolling it out, or even after you've got it in the pie pan.

The rest is just like using frozen.

Here's how crumbly it can look before going in the fridge:

This post also triggered my memory about a conversation Daikon and I had some time ago where he gave several helpful tips on making pastry crusts. Hopefully, he won't mind if I add those tips to this post in the hopes that others can benefit from them.Some of it is a repetition of the quote above, but fundamental concepts will be underscored.

 Daikon wrote:

If you've never been very good with flaky pastries like pie crust, then you are probably over-hydrating and over-mixing. The key with all of these kinds of pastries is to cut together the chilled shortening (butter, lard, whatever you are using) and flour thoroughly first until you've got something that looks like coarse sand or fine gravel (i.e., little pieces of shortening covered all over with flour), then add in the least amount of cold liquid (typically ice water) that you need for the dough to just barely come together into a crumbly ball. For both of these steps, the basic cutting blade in a food processor works perfectly. Just use 2 second pulses to cut in the shortening until it looks right, then more short pulses as you add 1/2 tablespoon of water (you can even use a spritzer bottle if you want to get really precise/fussy) at a time until most of the dough is in a ball, but with crumbly bits left over in the work bowl. In fact, Julia Child used to say that if a food processor could be used for nothing else than to make pie crust, she would buy one just for that, since it does such a perfect and easy job of it. It will seem too dry and crumbly to ever be successfully rolled out, but that's how it should be at this point. Just gather it all together into a ball wrapped in plastic wrap, squish it into a thick disk (to give you a head start in rolling it out later), and stick it in the fridge for several hours or overnight. Over that time, the liquid will become evenly distributed throughout the dough, and it will no longer be too crumbly. Now just keep the dough cold and work with it as little as possible (you may need to pound out the dough with your rolling pin while it is too cold to roll) so that the little bits of butter stay as discrete bits and do not melt before your pastry goes in the oven. Laminated doughs like puff pastry, streudel, and filo are a somewhat different story. 

You can also go the opposite direction and work a dough with similar proportions in a stand mixer or food processor until the shortening is completely incorporated into a smooth dough. After chilling, you will then have a "short dough" that will bake up into a still-tasty but much less flaky crust that is much better for something like a quiche, where making the common mistake of using a pie crust results in a soggy mess. A quiche made with a short dough crust (and of proper 2", "deep-dish" depth) is actually best if it is neither over-baked (should be just barely set) nor served right away, but instead refrigerated for a day or so after baking and rack cooling. Then individual servings reheated as needed for about 15 minutes in an oven.

Incidentally, the term "short dough" isn't used entirely consistently. I tend to distinguish between short dough and pie crust, but many people mean them both to mean essentially the same thing. Whatever the terminology, though, there is a definite difference in the finished product and its proper use depending on how thoroughly the shortening is incorporated into the dough, how much moisture is added, and how much the dough is worked to develop elasticity from the gluten.

And one more one more thing... if you want to make a really killer crust for an apple pie, substitute cheddar cheese 1:1 for half or more of the butter!

For myself, I plan on trying to put these tips to work starting with the Butte pasty, where it seems that perfection is not so critical; from there, I'm planning on going forward to Spanish Empanadas and other larger, savory pastry dishes. Once I build up some skills, I'd like to move onto desserts and regional specialties such as Dutch banket.

Thanks, Daikon!