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A pie is a baked dish that is often encased in pastry dough and filled with a variety of sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies can include thicker fillings made of dairy and eggs, fruit, nuts, brown sugar, sweetened vegetables, or other ingredients. Just three ingredients—flour, butter, and water—make up this delicious and incredibly simple pie crust recipe, which comes together in a matter of minutes. You only need a small bit of know-how and no specialized equipment to prepare it. That's accurate. Contrary to common opinion, creating homemade pie dough is not difficult.
Pie Crust
The basic ingredients for pie dough are flour, milk, fat, and salt. Use all-purpose flour for the liquid and ice water for the liquid, even though you can be quite fancy with all of those items. Kill two birds with one stone by adding frozen, salted butter to the mixture. If you don't have salted butter, season your flour with 2/3 tsp of sea salt. Because butter provides rich, creamy, and nutty overtones to the dough, use it instead of other fats. With shortening and other fats, which frequently leave a tasteless greasy film on your mouth's roof, you just can't obtain that.
The Secret
To make a perfect pie, follow the golden rule: keep everything cold at all times. Make sure to freeze your ingredients for this simple 3-ingredient pie crust recipe, especially in the summer when your kitchen may be a hot, steamy mess. Yes, place everything of it in the freezer, including the utensils and the butter and flour. Roll out the dough on a frozen cookie sheet if you've ever worked in a kitchen without air conditioning (horror). Simply freeze the butter and use cold water if you don't have the time or place for all of that.
Here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
Two ¾ cups all-purpose flour (plus some for dusting)
2 sticks salted butter (1 cup)
½ cup chilled water
Method:
Pour flour into dry measuring cups after passing it through a fine mesh sieve. Before adding the flour to a big bowl, level it with the back of a butter knife. As you grate the butter, place in the freezer to chill.
Use the box grater's big holes to shred the butter sticks. When handling the butter gets difficult, chop what's left of it into little, dice-sized pieces.
To the flour, add the butter. Toss the butter and flour with a spoon like you would a salad. Work quickly until the mixture resembles a rough, coarse cornmeal and the butter is thoroughly covered with flour.
Sprinkle the flour/butter mixture with four teaspoons of ice-cold, cooled water. The flour that has accumulated at the bottom of the basin should be swiftly combined with a fork.
When the flour/butter mixture stays together in a dough when you lightly pinch it, add water tablespoon by tablespoon, combining after each addition.
The rough dough fragments can be easily formed into a ball using your hands. Once your work area has been lightly dusted with flour, form the ball into a flat disc that is between three and four inches thick and about six inches in diameter.
Wrap the dough disc firmly with wax or plastic. Allow it to chill in the refrigerator for at least two hours and ideally all night.
Use the pie dough in your preferred recipes, or store it in the freezer or refrigerator for up to three months. This recipe makes two crusts.
How To Use
The versatility of this three-ingredient pie crust is what people like best about it. It can be used to make chicken pot pies or apple pies with two crusts. The dough is strong enough for a galette and elastic enough for hand pies. Even better, you can use the scraps to bake the cutest little cookies that you can give to your kids.
