Pie Crust 101

Grant called the other day and asked, "Grandma, have you posted your pie crust recipe?" Well, no, I haven't, although I've posted a lot of photos of pies. A flaky, tender pie crust depends not only on ingredients but also on technique, which is hard to describe.

Let's start with ingredients. Pie crust has four ingredients: flour, salt, fat and a liquid. I use unbleached flour, preferable Hudson Cream, which is milled in Kansas. For the fat I urge everyone to use an expeller-expressed vegetable oil instead of solid vegetable fat or butter, neither of which is good for one's arteries. I've always used the "Stir and Roll" pie crust recipe from this old book. It calls for milk as the liquid. Maybe water would work as well, but I've never tried it.

Stir and Roll Pie Crust
for an 8" or 9" pie

2 cups unbleached flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup oil

1/4 cup milk

Whisk flour and salt together. Pour oil into a liquid measuring cup and add a little more than ¼ cup milk to it. Do not stir the oil and milk. Pour the oil and milk all at once into the flour. Mix with a fork to moisten all the flour. Form dough into a ball and divide it in half. Keep skin contact with the dough to the barest minimum, as the heat from your hands will warm the oil and make the crust tough.

Roll out half the dough between two sheets waxed paper into a circle larger than the pie pan diameter, keeping outer edges as even as you can. Peel off the top paper and, holding the bottom paper by the bottom edge, invert the crust over pie plate. Peel off the remaining paper and adjust edges to remove any trapped air. Roll out top crust. Remove top paper and, with a sharp knife cut a slit in the middle of the crust. Set this aside.

Add fruit filling to bottom crust and dot with butter. Moisten the rim of the bottom crust with cold water and invert the top crust onto the pie. Lightly press the top and bottom rims together. Trim overhanging edges. Flute the crust edges. Sprinkle with a little sugar for sparkle.

Bake at 400º until filling begins to bubble in the center of the pie. The amount of time depends on the temperature of the fruit and other factors, but count on a minimum of 25 minutes. If the crust begins to brown too much, reduce the oven heat to 375º and continue baking until the filling bubbles.

Additional tips:

Fluff up the flour before putting it in the measuring cup. Always measure flour in a dry measure and level it off with the edge of a knife.

Some folks don't know the difference between a dry measure and a wet measure. The dry measure is on the left. The wet measure is on the right. Colorado peaches are in the background. They make great pie.

The amount of milk needed to bind the dough together varies with the amount of moisture in the flour. In a dry climate or air conditioned building, more milk is needed. In a damp climate the 1/4 cup called for in the recipe will be sufficient. After mixing the dough if you find it difficult to gather into a ball, add a little more milk and mix lightly again.


Mix and handle the dough as little as possible. Recently my nephew made a pie for a family gathering. "I used your recipe, Aunt Shirley," he said, "but I mixed it in the food processor instead of stirring it." Oh, boy, was that crust tough! The crust will be tough even if you just stir the oil and milk together before adding them to the flour.


After inverting the crust onto the pie pan slowly peel off the waxed paper. Start at one corner of the paper and be patient as you loosen the dough. If this proves too difficult, dust the bottom paper with a little flour before you roll out the crust.

Keep practicing until you get the hang of it. Even your mistakes will be edible, maybe even delicious.