How to Make an All-Butter Pie Crust

My go-to pie crust is a delicious and flaky All-Butter Pie Crust that is on the sweet side rather than savory. The recipe is simple and the steps are easy to follow. In this post I will show you how I make my favorite pie crust that works like a charm every single time.
A good pie crust can make or break a pie. I prefer an All Butter Pie Crust specifically for the taste. You will find that my recipe calls for slightly more sugar than most if you search around the internet. This is because I prefer a sweeter taste rather than savory in my pie crust. But I think it also works well with savory recipes. If you follow the steps below you can make a delicious flaky pie crust every time.

How to Make an All-Butter Pie Crust

You can make pie dough by hand, but my favorite way and the quickest way is to use a food processor with the plastic dough blade. This really enhances the pie dough texture as you can process the dough much quicker without melting the cold butter which is pertinent in achieving a flaky pie crust.

Processing the Ingredients

Use cold butter straight from the refrigerator. When I am batch making pie dough, I will cube the butter the night before and keep them in a bowl wrapped up and ready to go the next day. When cutting the butter into the flour, make sure to no overdo it, you pieces to remain no smaller than pea size and err on the larger side.

Only use as much water as needed to get the dough to form. About three tablespoon works for me every time but depending on the weather you may need a little more or a little less. With water, err on the little less side, but check by grabbing a chunk of dough with your fingers and press it together. If it holds, it is ready.

Forming the Dough

Line your cutting board/counter with a piece of plastic wrap and dump the dough on to the plastic wrap. Use the plastic wrap to gather the dough into a ball and shape it into a disk. This way you don’t need to add extra flour to this step. Now it is time to rest, at least one hour in the fridge or overnight if you are prepping ahead. You can keep premade pie dough in the fridge for up to a week, or freeze for a couple months. When freezing pie dough, make sure to double wrap and put it in a zip loc bag as well to prevent the dough from absorbing funky freezer odor.

Rocking and Rolling

I would switch back and forth using a regular rolling pin and a French rolling pin because I can be impatient sometimes. But a French rolling pin will apply more even pressure when rolling out the dough. And you can use it to transfer the dough from the counter onto your pie dish.

Be sure to leave some excess dough hanging over the side so you can form a decorative rim by fluting the edges. Once you form the pie crust in the dish, you can freeze it quickly before baking or store it in the freezer until you are ready to use it.

Par-Baking

Par-baking will help keep the crust from getting soggy when used with a custard type filling like this Chess Pie Tart or Pumpkin Pie. Always use pie weights when par-baking a pie crust to keep the side from falling in. You can buy ceramic pie weights at the store, but my personal favorite is dry bean. I keep 2 lbs of dry bean in a large jar just for this specific purpose. You can reuse them pretty much indefinitely.

This All-Butter Pie Crust is extremely versatile. I use it for everything from Strawberry and Cream Pie to Apple Butter Hand Pies. I even modified it slightly to make Pie Crust Cookies. Try it for yourself, I guarantee you will come back to this recipe time and time again for all your pie baking needs.

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Homemade All-Butter Pie Crust

Prep Time

15 mins

Cook Time

25 mins

Resting Time

1 hr

Total Time

40 mins

 

My go-to pie crust is a delicious and flaky All Butter Pie Crust that is on the sweet side rather than savory. The recipe is simple and the steps are easy to follow. In this post I will show you how I make my favorite pie crust that works like a charm every single time.

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: pie, pie crust, pie dough

Servings: 1 pie crust

Calories: 231 kcal

Author: Trang

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 rounded tablespoon granulated sugar
• 1/4 rounded teaspoon kosher salt
• 5 ounce unsalted butter - cold
• 3 tablespoon cold water
• Extra flour for rolling

Instructions

Make the dough

1. Add flour, sugar and salt in a small bowl and mix thoroughly with a whisk. Then transfer to a food processor fitted with the dough blade.
2. Cube the cold butter and add to the flour mixture. Pulse several times until butter is about pea and bean size, variation in size is okay, but no smaller than a pea.
3. Turn the food processor to “on” position and drizzle cold water over the dough mixture through the water hole, as soon as the dough starts to pull together turn the food processor off. You may need to stop the food processor in between and get a spatula to get the flour at the bottom to mix up.
4. Turn the dough out on the counter or cutting board and shape into a disk. Wrap in plastic and rest in the refrigerator for an hour.
5. At this point, you can use the dough as you please for a single crust pie, hand pies, tart, etc. Continue on the with following steps to prepare and par-bake the pie crust to use in recipe with a custard type filling.

Prepare and par-bake crust

1. Take pie dough out of the fridge and roll into a circle about 2” larger than your pie dish. Use extra flour to keep dough from sticking to the counter and roller.
2. Carefully place the dough over the pie dish, lightly press the dough into the bottom and side of the pie dish, let the excess dough hang over the side.
3. Trim some of the excess dough if necessary to create an even edge, but leave enough to fold under and flute the edge.
4. Cover the prepared pie dough with plastic wrap and freeze for 10 - 15 minutes.
5. Preheat the oven to 425°F.
6. Take the frozen pie crust out of the freezer and poke holes with a fork on the bottom and side.
7. Line the frozen pie crust with parchment paper, large enough to cover the crust completely.
8. Add pie weights or dry bean on top of the parchment paper, enough to fill to the top.
9. Bake pie crust for 20 minutes.
10. Remove pie weights or bean, and bake for another 5 minutes until slightly brown.
11. The pie crust can be baked to completion until golden brown, an additional 5 - 10 minutes to be used in pie recipe that doesn’t require further baking of the filling, such as cream pie.
12. Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack.

Recipe Notes

Calories are estimated assuming 8 servings per pie crust.

Shop The Recipe Tools

• Food Processor
• 9” Pie Dish
• French Rolling Pin
• Pie Weights
• Measuring Cups and Spoons

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