Perfect Flaky Pie Crust Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to making flaky crust? ›

Many recipes direct you to work the fat into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Just be sure to retain a few larger chunks of fat in the dough to ensure optimum flakiness. As it heats up, the fat creates steam, causing little pockets of air that create the flaky character.

That's three cups of flour, two cups, or two cubes of butter, four ounces, one cup of water. With your dry three cups of flour, I'll add a tablespoon of sugar, and then just about a teaspoon of salt. Your next ingredient would be your fat.

#2—Add cold water

Like the fat, the water should be ice cold. 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.

What kind of flour makes the best pie crust? Well, not high-protein bread flour! Use that for your chewy bagels. What you want for pie is flour that yields a tender, flaky crust, which means medium-protein all-purpose flour or low-protein pastry flour.

Apple cider vinegar is added to relax the gluten proteins in your dough and tenderize it.

In pie crust, you don't want gluten to form so you don't want to mix too much and overwork the dough. For a flaky crust, cut the butter so that chunks of butter about the size of walnut halves remain.

Keep It Cold

If your butter melts during the mixing or rolling process—before the pie crust hits the oven—you won't achieve those flaky layers we're looking for in this buttery pastry. With this goal in mind, the cardinal rule of pie crusts is to keep things as cold as possible.

The pros: Lard produces an extremely crisp, flaky crust. It's also easy to work with, as its melting point is higher than butter, so it doesn't soften as quickly while you handle it, or threaten to dissolve into the flour as quickly as butter before baking.

What is the basic formula in making pie crust? ›

The most flaky, tender crust comes down to a simple 3:2:1 ratio of ingredients—flour, fat, water— no actual recipe needed. Once I understood 3:2:1 pastry crust (which isn't hard, I promise) I had the foundation for not only pies, but also tarts, galettes, pot pies, hand pies and more. The “3” in this ratio is flour.

“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.

Sugar. Adding sugar to the dry ingredients for pie dough interferes with gluten development, aids in browning and, of course, adds sweetness.

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).

Butter for flakiness and flavor, and shortening for its high melting point and ability to help the crust hold shape. You can use butter-flavor shortening if desired. If you want to skip the shortening, feel free to try this all-butter pie crust instead.