Flaky Pie Crust Recipe (2024)

This is Claire’s pie crust technique from her book What’s for Dessert and it makes such a great crust! So glad to see it published here. Before anyone feels the need to say their technique is better, please try this out! She has a video on YouTube with King Arthur showing how it’s done.

I always make my pie crust dough in the food processor. The secret is to stop the food processor the SECOND the dough stops being fairly level in the machine and gathers itself into a ball (there will be bits still not incorporated). Then a few quick squishes on the counter to get it all stuck together, wrap, into fridge for at least 15 minutes.I also start with just a bit less ice water than the recipe suggests. Then if the dough doesn't gather quite quickly, I add a bit more.

I've been making all butter crusts for decades. Perhaps, the easiest route to a workable crust that is flaky, buttery, irresistible is using iced vodka instead of iced water.The reason is simple science: Water bonds with the glutens in starch; therefore, the more water, the less flaky the crust; however, without enough liquid the dough can be too crumbly. Iced Vodka allows for a workable AND flaky crust and almost all of the alcohol cooks off.

Bibi: food processor is the way to go. Once you cut the butter into small chunks and add ri rhe flour, 2-3 good pulses gets you your pea sized pieces of butter in the flour. Now you can add 1/4 cup of ICE WATER. Too much water and the dough is soupy, too little and the dough is crumbly. Run the foon processor unti the dough forms a nice ball. You are ready to roll out. I use the Jacques method and rollout the dough ball without refrigeration. I get a flaky crust and very time.

Good, but too much water to add at once. Add a few tablespoons at a time until it has the right feel, then stop, no matter how much water is left over. Pie dough is finicky.

someone else mentioned that there is a youtube of Claire showing you how to make this dough. I just watched it and I'm not kidding when I say it's pie-making life-changing. So many things I now understand. the video is for her apple pie but most of it is just on this dough technique. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcCa_dHHu30

How is 11/2 cup of flour 202 grams when a cup of flour is 125 grams?

for FP mixing, I give the dry ingredients a couple of pulses to blend. Cube the butter and let freeze for ~ hour. pulse butter w/dry until butter looks like pea-sized lumps (~ 10-14 pulses). Add ice cold water all at once & pulse 4-5 times - dough will still be scraggy. Turn out/scrape onto a board and press/form into a flat disk for chilling

I'm so very happy this recipe doesn't require the use of a food processor!! I get so tired of Perfect Easy Pie Crust recipes that rely on having one: you're using a food processor. Of course it's "easy." So thank you, Ms. Saffitz!

A pastry blender works much better and faster than a bench scraper. It has more cutting blades and its shape makes it easy to work the butter and flour mixture while it's still in the bowel. That way, you can add in the water and form the dough right in the bowel instead of having to dump a loose mixture of dough clumps onto the work surface. Much less of a mess that way.

Indeed you can! If you cut the cold butter into smaller bits, you can get by with a fork to mash the butter into the flour, or better, a pastry blender (inexpensive, hand-held tool). I still use the pastry blender as often as I do a FP - both work fine. The trick is to add the water gradually, mix lightly, and stop adding water as soon as the dough comes together. After decades of making pie crust, I still find each is unique - the ability of flour to absorb water varies quite a bit.

of course you can make a crust without a food processor - in fact, the recipe you are commenting on doesn't use a food processor.

Been making pie crust since I was eight or nine. Four simple ingredients 2/3 cup cold Crisco, a few Tbs ice water, 2 cups AP flour and pinch of salt salt. Cut crisco into flour/salt with pastry cutter or 2 dinner knives, stir in ice water a tbs at a time until it starts to form a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and put in fridge for 30 - 60 minutes, roll out between 2 sheets of wax paper, peel off one sheet, flip pastry into pie dish, crimp edge and you are done.

Whether or not you prebake your crust depends more on the filling you will be using.

This is a recipe for pie dough, not a recipe for pie crust.

I am 60 years old and I finally made a good pie crust! Actually, it was great if I say so myself. Thank you Claire. The video was key to getting me to try.

I am a big pie lover. This is by far the best pie crust I have made, and have tried many versions over the years. This technique has better results than using a food processor, pastry blender/cutter, vodka... her method of mixing in the butter, plus stacking the pastry like with puff pastry, makes it every flaky, & it is very easy to roll out. Don't knock it until you have tried it ...compare ! She explains the science behind her recipes in all of her videos too, they are great.

Don’t like. Lost structure while baking

I have made this twice as directed. It makes decent pie dough, but it requires a lot fussing around. I have made A LOT of pie dough recipes over the years, and this didn’t yield a product that was superior to other recipes that don’t require the lamination step. Also, like others I have found the resulting crust to be very flaky but not as tender as I’d hoped. Finally, it did not freeze welI for me. I suggest Cook’s Illustrated, Martha Stewart, or Julia Child (Baking with Julia) instead.

Used this recipe twice for pecan slab pie. Followed it exactly and watched videos twice. Weighed ingredients and did not overwork dough. Came out flakey and tasty, but tough as heck. Could barely cut with chefs knife. No idea what I did wrong, but am moving on to different crust recipe for sure at this point.

If you’re making this pie dough in hot/humid weather—the food processor is unfortunately the only way to go. Otherwise, the butter will not stand a chance unless you have AC in your kitchen. Even with frozen butter and the processor, the dough will not look crumbly like in the video of Claire making it. You can’t avoid the butter getting a little melty, so just work fast and get it into the freezer asap. Roughly 100ml of ice water should be enough to hydrate the dough in hot weather (30 deg C).

This is the best pie crust recipe I have ever made! Comes out perfect every time. And taste delicious!!

The King Arthur recipe calls for 450g of flour for a double crust recipe. This NYT recipe calls for 202g for a single crust which equals 404g for a double crust. Is there an explanation for the discrepancy?

Chilled in fridge several days before making

This turned out like puff pastry for me! It’s not bad, just unexpected for a pie. Lessons learned (after 2 attempts): 1) use 1/3 cup or 80ml water, whichever is the smaller. 2) follow the written instruction more than the video (I.e. the size of chickpeas, the size of peas). The first time, I was OCD about replicating the video (I.e. adding water after breaking butter chunks in half, leaving sizable pieces of butter), the result was a disastrous bread dough interspersed with butter chunks.

This makes a fantastic dough - easily the most workable pie crust I've ever made. I could be wrong, but I believe she's added the lamination step since What's for Dessert, where she has you chop it into fourths then pile them on top of one another? Either way, the result is a dough with chunks of butter of different sizes, layered on top of one another so that it's easy to roll and so flaky!

This was my first time making pie crust and it was a blast. I loved the messy with little cleanup approach this dough had. I used this recipe to make mini pies and they came out great, buttery and flaky. One note, make sure you're only using 1/3c cup water in the dough. The ingredients call for 1/2 cup, but you won't need it all.

Best pie crust ever. So, so delicious and flaky. Almost like puff pastry. Thank you for this fantastic recipe.

Not very good recipe. Crust came out crunchy, not flaky.

I'm a baking novice but got ambitious for Thanksgiving. Made this recipe successfully three times, for Claire's caramelized apple pie and pecan slab pie. I highly highly recommend watching the video linked above and finding the part where she walks you through making the dough. Seeing how she works the butter into the flour with a dough scraper and knowing what the texture was supposed to look like at each step was immensely helpful. Also, who knew making pie dough is like free therapy haha.