All Butter Pie Crust

Here is a easy recipe that needs no food processor and doesn’t take too long to get together. The key to any pie crust is cold butter and not overworking your dough. I always use european butter because it usually has a higher fat content than our american butter (which tends to have more water). The higher fat content makes for an ultra flaky and richer pie crust, perfect for this holiday season.

Ingredients

1 egg yolk

1 3/4 cups of unbleached all purpose flour

1/2 tsp of salt

a small bowl of ice water

4oz of unsalted cold butter

1.5 tbsp of sugar

Get a large bowl, put flour, salt, and sugar in the bowl and mix with your hands. Grate 4 ounces of butter into the flour mixture and mix with hands into the flour. Don’t break down the pieces, they should be irregular like little pebbles in your flour. In another small bowl, mix the egg yolk with 1/4 cup of ice water - whisk well. Drizzle over flour mixture and combine with fork. Continue to add ice water 1 tablespoon at a time until mixture holds together when squeezed.

Shape pie dough into a disc, wrap well and put into the fridge for at least 30 minutes before using. When rolling out your pie dough, heavily flour your board (you can dust off excess later), and work quickly. In order to get the dough into the pie pan safely, I always roll the dough around the rolling pin and then transfer to the pie pan. Cut off extra dough if necessary, fold edges under and crimp with left hand two fingers and right hand one finger. Refrigerate dough for 30 more minutes before baking.