Basic Pie Crust

It's Pi Day! Let's make pie! Or rather, let's post about how to make pie! Pictures to come as soon as I actuall go make some damn pie...

This recipe has its roots in the Joy of Cooking. It purports to make two 9-inch shells or one 9 inch covered pie, or two 10.5 inch tart shells. I agree with this assertion.

Equipment

A rolling pin

Optional, but highly recommended: a pastry blender

Ingredients

2.5 Cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

1 teaspoon white sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 sticks butter, as cold as freaking possible without being frozen

Ice water (have a tall glass on hand, drink what you don't use)

Method

Whisk together flour, salt, and sugar in a large bowl. If making a savory pie, consider omitting sugar; if using salted butter, salt can be cut in half. Now, consider the following:

Your job here is to cut butter into the flour, a process that banks on a little handy chemistry. Flour contains a protein, gluten, that likes to form long, robust chains; this permits bread, among other marvels. But the ideal pastry crust is flaky and light. So, cold fat (butter or shortening or lard) is worked into the flour. Chunks of flour are separated from one another by a wall of impassable deliciousne-- erh, shortening. Flakiness is achieved. Everyone rejoices.

However: this doesn't work if A) the butter gets too warm and melts, or B) the works gets too wet. Your hands emit heat, making them awkward implements for crust-making. There are baking ninjas who use their bare hands in combination with an ancient Tibetan hand-freezing technique to make pastry crust; certain masters of kung fu are known to make pie crust using nothing but their overwhelming chi. I use a pastry blender; I highly recommend them. Lacking that, use two forks.

Let me say this again: the butter needs to be cold. You'll never get anywhere with frozen butter, but leave it in the fridge until the last possible moment.

To cut in the butter: take it out of the fridge and, touching it as little as possible, cut it into tablespoon-ish-sized pieces. As you cut each piece, toss it into the flour. When all the butter is in the flour, begin working your pastry blender or forks, smashing the butter briskly against the bottom of the bowl. I have very good luck holding a fork in each hand, pinching butter and flour between the two. Go until you have a great deal of flour that looks like corn meal, plus a number of hunks of unblended butter.

Get your glass of ice water and, using a spoon to dip it, start sprinkling water over the dough. Stir with a wooden spoon. Add water until the dough will just hold together. Yes, it's going to be uneven; mixing like this it's impossible to really get the water spread around thoroughly. It's OK: you should be able to glom most of the dough together in the middle of the bowl into a semi-solid-but-fragile mass, with a surprising amount of unincorporated flour. I usually use around a quarter cup of water, but there's no hard-and-fast rule.

Now, the trick: laminating. Lamination takes those big hunks of flour and works them into flat, thin layers all through the dough, making a spectacularly flaky crust. This is how we do it:

Flour a work surface, form your dough into as much of a mass as you can, and turn it out. Sprinkle flour over the dough; flour your rolling pin. Roll the dough out to a thickness of about a half-inch. As you work, scoop the unincorporated bits and pieces up and put them in the middle of the dough, rolling them into the work. When the dough hits the half-inch-thick mark, make sure all the remaining loose bits are piled in the middle of the dough, fold it into thirds, then in half, and put it in the fridge. Leave it there for at least a half hour; covered in plastic wrap, it'll keep for a day.

When it's forming a pie crust time, remove it the instant before you need it. Flour your work surface and pin, dust the dough with flour, and roll it out to a half-inch again. Fold into thirds, then in half: now you're ready to roll to the thickness and shape you actually need.

For a very wet pie, consider pre-baking: roll the dough, line the baking vessel, poke the bottom and sides full of wholes, and apply a thorough layer of aluminum foil to the whole works. Seriously: make sure the foil is in contact with the bottom and sides of the crust, because your next step is to fill the whole shell with raw beans. This is called weighting the pie; yes, you can buy re-usable, purpose-specific pie weights. We're simulating a filled pie; without all the weight, the crust would poof up tremendously, then collapse into a sad heap of flakes -- which would be sad, so don't do it. Bake at 400 degrees for 20ish minutes, until the whole works is a light golden color. Hooray! Pie crust! 

Now go fill it with something!