Saturday, June 4, 2011

Pie crust

Oh man, why did I decide to make such a labor intensive and oven using meal last night when it was so hot? Sigh. Oh well. We had a chicken pie last night to use up leftover chicken. It was awesome. There are leftovers for lunch sometime in the next couple days.

This dough makes 4 crusts, enough for 2 complete pies.

  • 4 cups flour
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1/2 brick of Crisco (about 1 1/4ish cups)
  • 1 tablespoon vinegar
  • 1 egg
  • 3/4 cup cold water



Get your flour and salt into a big bowl and awkwardly dump your Crisco on top. Use 2 knives to cut the Crisco into the flour until it resembles tiny pebbles. I can't work 2 at the same time so I gave up and just used one to press the mix against the side of the bowl. Damn, I wish I had a pastry cutter.


Sprinkle the water over the top of the mix a tablespoon at a time and stir in, you won't need all the water, just enough so that the dough is just not quite holding together. Now you can add in the vinegar and egg. I like to stir it in a bit with the knife and then get right in there with my hands to make sure everything is mixed in. It should hold together now.



Dump your dough out onto the table, pat it into an even ball and cut into 4. Pat the 4 pieces into even balls, flatten them out with your hand and wrap them in plastic wrap. One or both sets of crust can go into the freezer if you don't need them right away. If you're using one within the next day it can just go into the fridge. It should chill for at least 20 minutes before you need to use it.




To roll out the crusts:

Very lightly flour your work surface. If you use too much flour you won't be able to pinch the top and bottom crust together.  There will also be leftover dough that gets cut off of the pie that we can use for something else and we want to be able to roll it out again.


Roll out your bottom dough, put the pan on top to make sure you've rolled it out enough. You can try to transfer the crust into the pan with just your hands and it shouldn't be too hard since this isn't a fragile, flaky crust dough. I have these thin flexible cutting boards that I got at the dollar store, they slide right underneath and you can slide the dough right off.




Press down into pan and trim off any extra with a knife. Now get your top dough ready as well. Now all you have to do is fill your pie, transfer the top crust on, pinch it onto the bottom crust all along the edge and then trim off the extra dough once more. Poke a couple holes in the top so any leaks will come out the top instead of the edge and pop it right into your preheated oven.




Bake at 400 for 40 minutes

Ball up all of your leftover dough, wrap it up or plop it into a plastic baggie and put it in the fridge, we'll be using it for breakfast tomorrow!!!

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