Basic Pie Dough
READ THIS FIRST: The key to pie dough is keeping your ingredients cold-mainly the butter. If the butter starts to warm up, it gets soft/greasy and your dough will have the wrong consistency. Also, when adding water, you want to add as little COLD water as possible-just enough to bind the dough together. This makes 1 pie shell, which is the bottom OR the top for a fruit pie-you will need to double the batch if you are making a pie that requires a top. This recipe can easily be doubled, but it's easier to work with single batches, so I recommend making each batch one at a time instead of making a larger batch and then trying to roll that out.
Ingredients
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- 1 cup flour
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- 1/2 tsp salt
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- 1 tbsp sugar
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- 1 stick (1/2 cup) cold butter
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- 2-3 tbsp cold water
Directions
- Combine the flour, salt and sugar in a medium bowl.
- Take your butter out of the fridge, and cut into pieces, approximately 1/2 tablespoon size. This just makes it easier to incorporate your flour mixture with the butter.
- Using a pastry blender (or food processor if you’re fancy), cut the butter into the flour mixture. You’re looking for a flaky consistency that will stick together a bit if you push it together, but will crumble almost immediately.
- Add 2 tablespoons of cold water directly from your fridge if you can (tap water will be lukewarm). You can use a wooden spoon to combine the ingredients, but I usually just use a fork. Operate under the knowledge that the less water you add, the better!
- Add another tablespoon of water if your dough doesn’t quite come together. You want your dough to be dry but stable-it should be tacky, but neither should is fall apart once rolled into a ball.
- Place your ball of pie dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap, wrapping the dough completely. Make sure that no dough is exposed to the air, as that will cause the dough to dry out and harden. Flatten dough into a disk once wrapped.
- You must refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours before you use the dough (the butter in the dough must remain cold). This can be made several days in advance.