If you have been one of those people who buy the premade frozen crusts from the store either in the shell or the unroll it and use your own pan style, I promise the taste does not compare to making your own!
It doesn't take but 5 minutes or so to make your own, and no more flimsy thin crusts !
This recipe makes enough for a 2 crust pie (such as apple) plus extra for an extra shell crust or for my kid's favorite: Cinnamon Sugar Pie Crust bites! (all depending on how thick you choose to roll your crusts.)
My next post will be a Master Mix Freezer Pie Crust recipe that will give you up to 7 crusts to store in the freezer at once, and you have up to 10 months to pull them out, thaw, roll and bake! No more trips to the store for store bought! But today lets just make a fresh batch of Grandma's Pie Crust.\
Printable Copy
Grandma's Pie Crust
(Makes 3 crusts)
Ingredients:
- 2 Cups Flour (plus extra for rolling it out)
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. sugar
- 1/3 tsp. baking powder
- 1 C. Shortening (ok she has Lard written down, so you know it's old!)
- 1/2 c. water
- 1/2 tsp. vinegar
Directions:
- In mixing bowl, add flour, salt, sugar, baking powder and shortening.
- Mix on low till crumbly.
- Add in water and vinegar and mix till blended and forms a ball
- Dump all the dough onto a lightly floured surface.
- Knead the dough together approximately 5-8 times till the ball is well blended together and smooth.
- Dough is now ready to roll out.
- If this is your first homemade pie crust and need a few extra steps, maybe these will help you out:
- Divide dough in half. Set one half aside.
- Roll the remaining half into a ball.
- Flatten the ball slightly with your hand or rolling pin.
- Using a lightly floured rolling pin, roll out your pie crust to slightly larger than your pie pan.
- Fold dough in half
- Fold in half again.
- Place folded dough into a pie pan with point of dough in the center of pan.
- unfold dough till it covers and drapes over the sides of the pan.
- Press down gently on pie crust to fit snugly into bottom and up sides of pan.
- If baking as a single crust shell, prick bottom and sides of crust with a fork.
- Place filling into pie crust. (I am using one of my Freezer Pie Fillings)
- Roll out second half of pie dough as you did above.
- Fold in half
- Fold in half again.
- Cut off a tiny bit of the tip of the triangle of folded dough.(this will create a center "vent" hole for the top of the pie) (and yes I forgot to do this step! so I did it later on )
- Place tip of triangle over center of pie filling.
- un fold triangle of dough to cover pie filling.
- Trim off the excess pie crust from both crusts by running knife along the edge of the pie pan.
- gently press the top and bottom crust together along the edges of the pan.
- Crimp with fingers or the tines of a fork the edges together.
Optional:
Embelish if desired.
Roll out the scraps of the pie dough and with a knife, free hand a leaf shape.
Gently place the leaves around the center vent hole of the top crust.
Bake pie according to pie filling recipe.
Mine was a thawed apple filling so baked it at 375° for about 45 minutes.
