Three-in-One All-Butter Pie Dough
By America's Test KitchenPublished on June 26, 2018
Time
25 minutes, plus 2 hours chilling (for fully baked pie crust: 2 hours, plus 2 hours chilling and 20 minutes cooling)
Yield
Makes enough for one 9-inch pie
Ingredients
Before You Begin
This recipe was developed in a metal pie plate, but it will work in a glass pie plate and even a disposable pie plate. Do not use this dough in a deep-dish pie plate or a plate without a lip around the edge. When fully baking this dough, we prefer to use granulated sugar in place of pie weights, but raw rice, dried beans, or ceramic pie weights will also work. The sugar can be stored and reused for baking future pie doughs. Chilling the dough for 2 hours is important; even if you plan on freezing this pie dough for later use, do not skip this step.
Instructions
- Process flour, 1 tablespoon sugar, and salt in food processor until combined, about 3 seconds. Scatter butter over top and pulse until irregular large chunks of butter form with some small pieces throughout, about 5 pulses. Add ice water and process until little balls of butter form and almost no dry flour remains, about 10 seconds, scraping down sides of bowl after 5 seconds.
- Turn out dough onto clean counter and gather into ball. Sprinkle dough and counter generously with flour and shape dough into 6-inch disk, pressing any cracked edges back together. Roll dough into 13-inch circle, reflouring counter and dough as needed.
- Loosely roll dough around rolling pin and gently unroll it onto 9-inch pie plate, leaving at least 1-inch overhang around edge. Ease dough into plate by gently lifting edge of dough with your hand while pressing into plate bottom with your other hand. Trim overhang to ½ inch beyond lip of plate.
- Tuck overhang under itself; folded edge should be flush with edge of plate. Crimp dough evenly around edge of plate using your knuckles. Pierce bottom and sides of dough all over with fork, about 40 times. Wrap dough-lined plate loosely in plastic wrap and refrigerate until dough is very firm, at least 2 hours or up to 2 days. (After being refrigerated for 2 hours, dough-lined plate can be wrapped tightly in plastic and frozen for up to 1 month. Let dough thaw at room temperature for 25 minutes before using.)
- For a fill-and-bake pie: Fill chilled pie shell and bake according to recipe instructions.For a partially baked crust: Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 375 degrees. Line chilled pie shell with aluminum foil and, while pressing into plate bottom with 1 hand to keep foil flush with bottom of plate, work foil around crimped edge with your other hand. Fill foil to lip of plate with sugar. Transfer plate to wire rack set in rimmed baking sheet and bake until edges are dry and pale, about 45 minutes. Remove foil and sugar, rotate sheet, and continue to bake until center of crust is light golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes longer. Let cool before proceeding with recipe.
Time
25 minutes, plus 2 hours chilling (for fully baked pie crust: 2 hours, plus 2 hours chilling and 20 minutes cooling)Yield
Makes enough for one 9-inch pieIngredients
Test Kitchen Techniques
Ingredients
Test Kitchen Techniques
Ingredients
Test Kitchen Techniques
Why This Recipe Works
For this flaky, ultrabuttery pie crust, we ditched the traditional and time-consuming step of forming the dough into a disk and chilling it before rolling it out. Instead, we rolled it out immediately after the dough came together in the food processor. Since the butter wasn't cold, the dough was more pliable and much easier to work with. But to avoid overworking it (which causes toughness), we manipulated it less on the front end as it came together: We pulsed butter into the dry ingredients just until it formed irregular large chunks (instead of typically more processed pea-size pieces). We then processed this mixture with a little water just until tiny balls of butter formed (not a cohesive mass of dough). To keep the bottom and sides from bubbling up during baking, we docked the dough with the tines of a fork so steam could escape. We chilled the dough at this point to let the flour hydrate, a step that prevented toughness.
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