The Absolute No Fail Perfect Every Time Pie Crust

Pie crust is made up of a few simple ingredients probably pretty universally known the world over. Flour, fat, egg, water. Yep, pretty simple.

BUT (finger-in-the-air caveat) . . . there are a few secrets to the perfect pie crust. And a few more to score the The Absolute No-Fail-Perfect-Every-Time Pie Crust.

Secret #1:  Cold. Use cold ingredients, refrigerated egg, coldest water you can come up with, etc. I'm beginning to understand the whole granite pastry station and marble rolling pin thing. Cold is essential to pie crust.

Secret #2: DO NOT OVERMIX!!!!! Maybe this should've been #1, 'cause I can't stress enough that overmixing makes a tough crust. And yes, in the pie crust world, overmixing is a word - a very, very important word. The dough should look shaggy, perhaps even lumpy - though the lumps shouldn't be any bigger than peas. I find that my OCD comes out when I use the pastry cutter and I want to mix the ingredients to a Play Dough consistency, so I use ye olde two knife mixing technique and barely cut it enough to incorporate my ingredients. Maybe you're someone who's strong enough to avert your inner OCDness and can use the pastry cutter. Use your own discretion.

Secret #3:  Do not use your hands! See #1. Your hands are warm. See #2. Your hands naturally want to make something smooth and pretty (like Play Dough), not something shaggy and lumpy (like The Absolute No-Fail-Perfect-Every-Time Pie Crust).

Bonus Secret!:  Lard. If you've just butchered your pig or bagged a bear and have some fat just layin' around, render that stuff down and use it in your pie crust! It's the best. Or, if it's not butchering time, you can buy a little box of lard from the ethnic section of your store. Or, you can just use vegetable shortening like Crisco. Butter flavored Crisco is amazing. Butter doesn't work (I think this is the only equation where butter or bacon isn't the answer), vegetable oil doesn't work. You must use either lard or shortening. It's the The Absolute No-Fail blah,blah,blah,blah rule.

Here's the recipe:

3 Cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups lard or shortening
1 egg
1 Tbsp vinegar (white or cider, doesn't matter)
5 Tbsp COLD water
This recipe calls for 1 tsp salt, but I've made crust both ways and I can't discern a difference so I leave it out. It makes me feel better about the lard.

All our neighbors have at least one apple tree. We have two. And our neighbor down the street brought us two boxes of apples from his tree this week. And I just spent an afternoon pressing cider with Zombie Team Neighbor (so fun!) who I dibs for my zombie apocalypse team 'cause she hunts wild mushrooms, has a cider press, ferments booze, gardens and stuff. So, since it's apple season in the 'hood, I'll show you what I'm typing about.

This is what you need:

Though, I should say you don't need some of this stuff. When I was a poor college student, I rolled out dough with the side of a glass. Just make do with what you've got.

                                 And the nesting straw stuck on the egg is definitely optional.

You start with your big bowl and put three level cups of all-purpose flour in there. That's dry measuring cups, not wet. Sifted or unsifted, doesn't matter. Add the 1 1/2 cups of lard or shortening. Cut it together with two knives until the shortening lumps are no bigger than peas.

In a cereal bowl put all your COLD ingredients. 1 egg, 1 Tbsp vinegar, 5 Tbsp water and mix with a fork. Add contents of the cereal bowl to the ingredients in your large bowl and flip it around and stir it up with your fork until there's no more flour on the bottom of your bowl. Roughly divide the dough into four sections - the recipe makes two two-crust pies.

                                            Don't mind the apple bits in the cider vinegar!

Put some flour on the counter, roll out one of your four dough lumps (I love Grandpa's rolling pin), scrape it off the counter with your spatula or pastry knife and roll it onto your rolling pin at the same time, then wheel the dough off the pin and onto your pie pan. This technique allows you to transfer the rolled dough from the counter to the pie pan without rippage or other crust-tastrophes.

This is where I'm gonna interject two layers of apples (usually my rule is about 8 apples per pie, figuring one apple per serving), each layer covered with one Tbsp sugar. You can add cinnamon if you want to, but Neighbor Down the Street's apples are naturally a little spicy so I'm gonna leave it out. You can dot the apples with butter to add some richness. I always figure the richer the better, so my apple pies are dotty.

Roll out the top crusts. Then roll them onto the apples in your pie pan. Crimp the edges. Try out your art-work. I like to cut a picture of whatever the pie is into the top crust. Cherries, berries, in this case, apples. This allows steam to escape. And then I wet my fingers with water and rub them on the top crust and dust it with sugar. 'Cause if you're going to have a piece of pie, you might as well get all the sugar you can, right? Plus, it looks prettier after you bake it.

Then you bake it. 350 degrees (why is there no degree key on my keyboard?) for 40 minutes. And people will rave about your apple pie and your crust and ask for your recipe. And you can airily say, "Oh, a little flour, a little fat, an egg - you know - ingredients are ingredients!". Or, you could save them years of pie-angst and tell them the secrets of The Absolute No-Fail-Perfect-Every-Time Pie Crust!

Oh, and extra-credit bonus - don't bother doubling the batch. It doesn't work. If you have more than two pies to bake, start the crust recipe all over for each pair. The amount of ingredients in this recipe is scientifically engineered and mechanically calibrated to be just right - any more and it'd require more mixing (tough crust) - any less and you'd only have 3 crusts!