All-Butter Crust Recipe

Crust is the foundation of all your pies. Bakers have their preferences of which fat to use, like lard or vegetable shortening, but I’m all about the butter, baby. Fat is flavor, and using a butter with a high fat percentage when making your dough results in a pie crust that you’re gonna wanna eat crust first!

Ingredients

• 1¼ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon kosher salt
• 1½ teaspoons granulated sugar
• ½ cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch pieces
• ½ cup cold water
• 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
• ½ cup ice

Directions

Stir the flour, salt and sugar together in a large bowl with a flat bottom. Add the butter pieces on top of the dry ingredients. Using your fingers, toss the butter in the dry mixture so each cube is coated. Use a pastry blender or your fingers to cut or rub the butter into the mixture until it is in pieces a bit larger than peas (a few larger pieces are OK; be careful not to over-blend). You want to have big butter chunks in your crust: It helps create a flaky effect, as well as adding delicious buttery hits of flavor!

In a separate large measuring cup or small bowl, combine the water, cider vinegar and ice. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of the ice water mixture over the flour mixture; do not add the ice, which is just there to keep the liquid cold. Using your hands in a circular motion, bring the mixture together until all the liquid is incorporated. Continue adding the ice water mixture, 1 to 2 tablespoons at a time. Carefully mix until the dough comes together in a ball, with some dry bits remaining. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead gently until it comes into one mass; you don’t want to overwork it.

Shape the dough into a flat disk, wrap in it plastic and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, preferably overnight, before using.

Wrapped tightly, the dough can be refrigerated for three days or frozen for up to three months. Thaw frozen dough overnight in the fridge.

Voracious

Bake With Stacey

Two more recipes from 50 Pies, 50 States for AARP members to try:

Scallion Bagel Pie With Lox, Onion and Thinly Sliced Lemon

This pie is based on my favorite bagel order and honors my current home in Brooklyn.

Blushing Prickly Pear and Apple Pie (Arizona)

Blushing apples and candied ginger meld perfectly with the prickly pear for this pie, which is best to bake in late summer through early winter, as that’s the peak season for prickly pears in the Northern Hemisphere.

Read about Stacey Mei Yan Fong’s cookbook, 50 Pies, 50 States.