I don’t often bake pies but whenever I do I use my grandma Nancy’s pie crust recipe because it works perfectly every single time. It’s not only great for sweet pies, but savory pies as well like my favorite chicken pot pie.
This recipe makes two crusts. So two pies with only the bottom crust, or one pie with a top and bottom crust.
Ingredients
- 3 cups flour- scooped and top leveled with the back of a butter knife
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup + 3 tablespoons of vegetable shortening
- 6 tablespoons cold water (I just fill a bowl or measuring cup with water and a few ice cubes and scoop it from there with my measuring spoon)
Directions
- Add your flour and sugar to a bowl and whisk together. Mix in your vegetable shortening and use a pastry cutter to do so. Once it looks like photo 2 (above), add in your water and mix again until it looks like photo 3. If it seems a little too dry, add another tablespoon of water, and if it seems a little too wet, add in a little more flour. After the pastry cutter, I like to mix it with my hands a bit and make it into one big log of dough.
- Cut your dough into two equal size pieces, and put half of it onto a clean floured counter top. Sprinkle the top of the dough with flour as well and use a rolling pin to roll out your first crust into a circle, about 1/4 inch thick, maybe even a little thinner. Keep adding flour to the top of your dough because you don’t want it to stick to your rolling pin.
- To put your crust into your pie plate, roll it onto the rolling pin, adding flour to the bottom of the crust (the part that was touching the counter) so it doesn’t stick together. Then roll it out onto your pie plate.
- Do the same thing as before to make a top for your pie, or make a cute design like I did above. Although I’ll admit mine could use some work!
- Bake your pie as usual, I made rhubarb pie with this crust and set it to °375 for 40 minutes. Don’t forget to add some holes in your crust to let moisture out. We don’t want any soggy crusts!
Tips: For left over pie crust, I just roll it out, add butter sugar and cinnamon and roll it up like a log. Bake for about 15 minutes before checking to see if it is done!