4 Tips for Successful Pie Crust

Easy Ways to Improve Pastry Dough Quality and Consistency

Nov 15, 2009

Making a successful pie crust is easy when you choose the right solid fats, roll the dough on a cold surface, don't use too much water and handle with care.

Fat, flour, a few tablespoons of water, and a dollop of finesse are all that is needed to make a tender, tempting successful pie crust at home. However, some home bakers may avoid making pastry because of past disappointing results or the perception that pie crust is time-consuming or difficult to prepare. A few simple tips and techniques can help improve the quality of one's pie crust or pastry dough, and make successful pies, tarts, or quiches part of anyone's cooking repertoire.

Choose An Appropriate Fat Source for Pastry Dough

The holy grail of pie crust is flakiness. A flaky, tender pastry is the result of just enough fat clumps in a mixture of flour, fat, and water. As the dough bakes, the fat melts, leaving little air-filled pockets in the crust. These gaps are what gives a pie crust or pastry a flaky texture.

A solid fat, such as lard, butter, shortening, or margarine, is absolutely essential for making flaky pastry. Liquid fats, such as canola oil, tend to result in tough pie crust with a crumbly texture (Russ Parsons, How to Read a French Fry, 2001, Houghton Mifflin). Which solid fat -- lard, butter, shortening, or margarine -- is the most appropriate for pie crust?

Lard makes an exceptionally flaky and tender pie crust. Although some people may balk at using lard because of its perceived unhealthiness, lard actually contains less saturated fat than an equal amount of butter. Corby Kummer, food writer for The Atlantic Monthly, points out "[Lard contains] approximately 40 percent saturated fat [which] is lower than butter's nearly 60 percent." Kummer goes onto address the relative monounsaturated fat (the reportedly "good" fat that is found in avocados) content of lard, compared to other cooking fats: "...olive oil contains a saintly 74 percent [of monounsaturated fat], yes. But scorned lard contains a very respectable 45 percent monounsaturated fat - double butter's paltry 23 or so percent" ("High on the Hog", New York Times, August 12, 2005). Therefore, lard is not necessarily more unhealthy than other fat sources for pie crust, and should not be shunned.

"Shortening and margarine are good choices for pie crusts because they have the unusual ability to maintain the same texture at a wide range of temperatures" notes Russ Parsons in his kitchen science book How to Read a French Fry (2001, Houghton Mifflin). This means that a home cook can be less careful about keeping the pastry dough chilled and still expect a flaky crust. The relative ease of making pie crust using shortening or margarine is a big plus for cooks in a hurry or beginning bakers.

Butter is much harder to work with because it melts at room temperature. It also contains more water than shortening or margarine, which can make a pie crust tough (Parsons, 2001). However, pie crust made with butter has a much richer flavor. A home baker may choose to use a combination of butter and other solid fats (such as shortening) as a compromise, yielding pastry with a rich buttery taste that's much easier to work with.

Do Not Add Excessive Water

A common error is to add too little fat and too much water to the dough. This makes a disappointingly tough crust that is much less flaky than desired. Water should be added by the teaspoonful, rather than all at once, to avoid this problem.

Add only ice-cold water to pastry dough during preparation. Remember that the key to a flaky pastry is those small fat globs mixed in with the flour. Warm water will melt those globs when the dough is being mixed and rolled out, causing the finished pie crust to be tougher and crunchier than desired.

Roll the Dough on a Cold Surface

Again, the dough needs to stay cold to keep the fat clumps solid before the crust goes in the oven. Rolling the dough on a cold surface can help. A marble or granite countertop is ideal, but a chilled wooden or plastic cutting board also works well. This is a particularly important technique for bakers using butter in their pie crust, because butter is especially prone to melting at room temperature.

Do Not Overmix the Dough

Gluten, the protein framework of flour, is developed when a dough is mixed. Developing a gluten "scaffold" is vital if a baker is making a loaf of bread, but quite undesirable for a pie crust. Over-mixing a pie crust, therefore, causes too much gluten development and renders the finished product tough.

Successful Pie Crust Is Easy to Accomplish With 4 Simple Tips

Pie crust is a combination of just fat, flour, and water; making a good pastry lies in the technique used to mix these simple ingredients. Any home baker can make a flaky and delicious pie crust by keeping the dough cold, not over-mixing, avoiding excess water, and choosing an appropriate solid fat for their pastry.

The copyright of the article 4 Tips for Successful Pie Crust in Pies/Cookies/Squares is owned by Molly Markey. Permission to republish 4 Tips for Successful Pie Crust in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.