Name: How to Make Pie Crust
Uploaded: 2024-12-04T11:29:19.000Z
Duration: 15 min 53 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hey, I'm John Kanell, and today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making perfect pie crust with all my tips and tricks.

First off, I'm measuring out one and a half cups or 180 grams of all-purpose flour.

This recipe calls for double that, but we're working in two batches.

The flour goes right into the bowl of my food processor, but if you don't have a food processor, don't worry, I'm gonna talk about how to make this by hand and show you too.

For a bit of sweetness, I'm adding one tablespoon of sugar.

This is a universal pie crust, works in both sweet and savory.

If you want your pie crust a bit sweeter, you can add up to a quarter cup of sugar.

We're gonna whiz this up just to combine.

If you're doing it by hand, you're just gonna whisk it up in a big bowl.

Now I need one cup of rock hard cold butter.

If you're doing this by hand, it's the exact same step.

This cubed butter goes right into the fridge because I don't need it right now.

This butter goes right into the food processor after it's cubed.

Now we're gonna sprinkle this cold cubed butter right into our flour mixture.

We're gonna whiz this up for about 30 seconds until there's tiny little pieces of butter throughout.

This is a hack for making it work in a food processor.

If you're doing it by hand, you're gonna add all the butter into the flour and work it up.

Your goal is to have butter that's anywhere from like tiny little pieces to pea size all the way to almonds.

You kind of want some big pieces of butter in there too because they work some magic.

The nice thing about doing this by hand is you have so much control over the size of the butter and you can cheat it into a rough puff and get like pages and pages of butter and flour to give you a flaky, beautiful pie crust.

Both ways work really well, but I have to say, I actually really enjoy making it by hand.

The nice thing about using a food processor is it's convenient, you don't get your hands dirty, and it's fast.

All right, we need another one and a half cups or 180 grams of flour.

If you look at this mixture, it looks almost like flour.

What happened is butter is completely coating all the flour and it's preventing the gluten from forming just like a reverse crumb.

This is gonna give you a delicious, tender, really great pie crust.

Because now, we're gonna add in the remaining half cup of butter, 113 grams.

Along with the remaining one and a half cups of flour.

There we go, entombing the butter and flour.

I'm pulsing this twice just to distribute things.

We're doing this in two batches because when you use a food processor to make pie dough, it's so convenient and easy.

The problem is the butter gets worked in too much and you lose some of the tenderness of the dough.

If you do it by hand, I will say, it is like the best of the best.

And I'll show you how to do that right next.

Right now, I'm gonna drizzle in a quarter cup of ice water, just all over the top.

I'm gonna add one more tablespoon and give it a test.

You wanna have some big pieces of butter left over because that is the magic of a delicious pie crust.

It's gonna look like a wreck, like it looks like powder, but the test is when you put it in your hands, you should be able to squeeze it together and it'll hold its shape.

You saw how it kind of held its shape, but it fell apart too fast.

It needs one to two more tablespoons of ice water.

One hack that people do, but it's very confusing in recipes, is to use an alcoholic vodka with the ice water.

And what that does is it gives you liquid that won't hydrate the dough.

So it's not gonna activate the proteins and it bakes off.

So it still looks like powder when you lift it up, but we can work it together and make a magical dough out of this.

This is a versatile pie crust you could use for anything, but if it's fall or the holidays and you wanna add some more oomph to your dough, go ahead and sprinkle in a teaspoon of cinnamon with the dry ingredients.

You could add a little bit of allspice or nutmeg, cardamom.

Any of your favorites are really gonna be beautiful in this dough.

I love working on a pastry mat because you can lift it and move it.

There's never gonna be a counter emergency where things are stuck.

We're gonna make this into dough by pressing it together.

I actually like to use the pastry mat and with the heel of my hands, push it, and in doing so, I'm pressing it together and flattening those little pieces of butter into pages.

You can also just almost do a kneading motion and it really comes together.

The thing is with pie dough, you do not want to add too much water.

That'll take away the crisp, short crust-like quality of it, but you need to add some.

It's gonna be a little crumbly still, but it'll all come together in the fridge when it chills.

The little bit of water in there will hydrate the dough and just seep its way into the flour as it chills.

You're just bringing it together until it holds into a ball.

I'm gonna divide this into two equal pieces.

It needs to chill for at least 45 minutes until we start working it.

These are like beeswax-coated fabric cloths that are like plastic.

And we can just wrap this up, pop this into the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

It could be there for up to like overnight.

And if you wanna make this in advance, you can freeze the disks of dough.

Just let them thaw overnight and make sure they're wrapped tightly.

By hand, we're just gonna drizzle the ice water in, just like with a food processor.

But here, I'm using the palm of my hand to press this together in the bowl.

It starts coming together, but you see big, beautiful pieces of butter.

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How to Make Pie Crust

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