How to Make Perfect Pie Crusts for Thanksgiving

When it comes to pie crust,

there's really two main ways to go.

You have a single crust like your pumpkin pie,

and then you have your double crust pies.

We're talking about apple and blueberry,

where there's a crust underneath and then a crust on top.

Today I am gonna make one of each

and you'll see that the techniques vary slightly,

but either way you go, it starts with a dough.

[lively music]

A good pie crust is light and flakey,

and it all starts with how you make your dough.

First thing we do is add our flour.

This is just all purpose flour, regular granulated sugar

and some kosher salt.

I'm gonna use my fork here.

Just gonna like get those ingredients mixed in.

I'm gonna add my fats.

I have some butter, and the butter adds

that nice buttery richness, it is chilled.

And then lard. Lard adds an amazing texture to your dough.

Basically, lard is rendered pig fat,

and this is the fat that people used to use

when they raise their own animals.

It makes a really nice pie dough.

Next thing I'm gonna do is cut in our fat.

When I say cutting in fat, we are basically going to

break our fat up into small pea-size pieces.

Right now you can see it's super crumbly

and what I want to do is just kind of squeeze my fat

into the flour.

There are some specialized tools for cutting in.

I personally like to use my hands.

A lot of people are gonna come at me in the comments

and say, Hey, your hands are too warm.

You're melting that fat.

As long as your ingredients are cold

and you work with it quickly, hands are not an issue.

If the butter is small or lard is small,

it's not gonna melt out.

It's actually gonna give you that puff

and that steam between the layers.

And that's what we want for a good pie dough.

If I tried to put this into the dough,

what's gonna happen is all the fat's gonna melt out

and you'll have like a void or an empty spot in your dough.

You can see that the flour and the butter have formed

nice kind of granules, and then I'm gonna add my water.

I like to use cold water.

Cold water is going to make the fat so it doesn't melt.

I'm just gonna start to bring it together.

Again, with this, you don't want to add too much water

and you don't wanna work it too much.

The goal here is to add as little water as possible

to bring it together.

I think the recipe is about a half a cup.

And what I usually say to my students, once you start seeing

that it's not like dusty flour in the bottom,

you're probably pretty close.

Part of the reason I like using my hands

when I add the water, is that I can feel the dough.

I can see what the moisture content is.

I can say, Oh, I feel it. It's gonna stick together.

I think I'm okay. I can stop with the water.

So I'm gonna dump it on my board.

I'm gonna do what I call the bulldozer.

I'm just gonna squeeze it this way, squeeze it this way,

just squeeze it, really not working it.

Push it down, squeeze it together so that it holds together.

[gentle music]

Right now, my dough is not sticking to the table.

If it's sticking, what's the problem?

You have too much water.

If you want to avoid a tough pie crust,

work it as little as possible and don't add any more flour.

If we add more flour here,

it's definitely going to dry that crust out.

It's not gonna be nice and flaky and tender.

And if you work this too much, you're gonna form that gluten

and that gluten's gonna make it tough.

I'm gonna cut my dough in half.

When we cut in our fat,

what we're looking to do is form layers.

What happens is I have two layers of flour

and then little pieces of butter or fat in between.

And when that butter or fat get really hot and steamy,

we're gonna get a little pushup there

and that's gonna give us those flaky layers,

and that's what we want for a good pie dough.

When you do pie doughs, chilling in between

and letting it rest is another crucial step

to what we're doing.

When you let your dough rest, it relaxes the gluten.

And when we bake this pie dough, it will not shrink up.

Gluten is basically strands of protein

that hold our baked goods together

and it makes our baked goods chewy,

and in a pie crust, we don't want it to be chewy,

we want it to be flaky.

So we're walking a tightrope of just enough gluten

to hold it together and a lot of butter to make it flaky.

And they can go right into the fridge

for at least a half hour.

[lively music]

Som I've taken my dough outta the fridge

for about five minutes.

We don't want it to be warm,

but I don't want it straight out of the fridge.

So, basically what I'm gonna do when I unwrap it,

I'm gonna dust this with a little bit of flour.

We don't wanna go crazy with this, right?

We just want to add enough flour

so it doesn't stick to our surface.

And I'm gonna take my roller. I'm not gonna let it spin.

I'm gonna just push down.

Give it a turn.

Before I roll it out, if it's too hard,

you'll see that I'm starting to get cracks here.

We can fix those. It's not a problem.

But when I press down on it like that,

it's starting the process of softening some of that butter

so it's easier to roll.

Rolling back and forth,

trying to get it as uniform as possible.

The corner turn is gonna help with that uniformity,

and then we're gonna transfer it to my pan.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna fold it in quarters,

put the point of that quarter right in the middle of the pan

and then unfold it into the pan,

'cause I'm gonna push it down into the pan,

letting everything excess hang over.

My pie dough's in the pan. It's looking great.

I'm gonna put this in the fridge and chill it thoroughly

and use it for a single crust.

[lively music]

With your single crust pies, it sounds just like it is.

It's a single crust on the bottom of the pie.

It's like your pumpkin pies.

First thing we need to do is dock our dough.

Dock, it's a complicated word.

All it means is poke some holes in it.

The holes are gonna be there to let some excess steam out.

We don't want our dough to start to bubble up.

We're gonna fold under to get a nice even crust.

We'll go all the way around

'cause we want a nice crust on this.

And then just give it a little squeeze.

I want to have that one edge.

And then we get our fingers in here,

and just crimp like you're walking with your fingers.

For blind baking, I need two pieces of equipment.

I need some parchment paper and some pie weights.

You don't wanna use wax paper here

'cause then your pie will taste like crayons.

You don't have to spend the money on ceramic pie weights.

I use beans at home.

Unless you like going to the dentist on an emergency

or the emergency room, do not eat these.

So, basically with a single crust,

you're gonna par bake it or blind bake it.

And that means we're gonna cook it

before we put the filling in, right?

We're gonna get a nice brown crust for that.

We don't want to get a soggy bottom.

So, what I like to do before I put my parchment in

is give it a little crumple.

[paper rustling]

This kind of softens up the parchment

and makes it a little more pliable

and it'll fit in there better.

And then the pie weights go right in.

And what I wanna do with the pie weights is even them out.

The pie weights are gonna hold the dough down

so it doesn't puff up

and we don't get any like large voids underneath.

So I'm gonna put this in the oven for about 20 minutes.

To the oven.

The pie dough has blind baked, but it is not done.

What I'm gonna do is take my pie weights out

and you can take them out right in your parchment

and put them aside.

So my pie weights are out,

but this needs to go back in the oven

for about eight to 10 minutes.

We want it to get nice and lightly golden brown

before we put our filling in.

So let's go over to the oven.

Look at that.

We're at a really good point here.

You can see that we have a very light brown on it.

It is set in the center and that's what we want.

Not crispy just yet, but it's getting there.

And now we're ready for our filling.

Whenever I bake a pile, I like to put it on a sheet tray.

This'll stop any spillover from burning

to the bottom of my oven.

It is also a lot easier to carry.

Let's get our custard filling in.

I like to fill it as high as I could possibly go

without it spilling over.

We're gonna put this into the oven at 350

for about 40 to 45 minutes until our custard is just set.

You can see right now it's super liquidy.

What we're looking for when it's done is

that it's slightly wiggly in the center,

but set on the sides.

The crust is gonna go from like this pale brown

to a nice golden brown.

[lively music]

So a double crust pie or a filled pie

has a crust on the bottom and a crust on top.

We're gonna seal that filling in

and get a nice golden brown crust on top.

With a double crust, there is no blind baking.

I do change the temperatures in the oven a little.

I like to go a little bit higher in the beginning

and then lower it down,

so that we get some of that nice browning

in the beginning of the bake.

There are some similarities

between a single crust and a double crust,

and one of the similarities

is that I want to dock this dough

so that we don't get any steam from underneath.

Filling goes in.

Today I'm gonna make an apple pie,

probably one of my favorite ones out there.

I like to pre-cook my filling and chill it completely.

It's nice and thickened. That's what I want with this.

I have my egg wash. I'm gonna brush this around the edge

and this is going to glue my top and bottom together.

I'm going to take it and just flip it right on top.

So now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna push down

so that our pie crust sticks to each other

and then we're gonna take this

and fold it under the bottom crust.

Not only does the the egg wash hold the crust together,

but the folding under also helps

with keeping all that filling in.

And then I'm gonna do a little more pleating

so it looks a little bit better.

And then we can take our fingers, push, push in.

Now that we have it crimped, I want

to put some vent holes in.

I have a knife.

I'm just gonna put nice five little vent holes in.

This is gonna allow any steam to come out.

If we don't do vent holes,

I'm not gonna say it's gonna explode,

but we might get a lot of doming.

And what I really want is the pie crust

to be sitting on top of the filling.

So the egg wash here is not just

for sticking our pie dough together,

it's also gonna give us a little bit of shine.

So I'm gonna take the egg wash

and I'm gonna brush it on my pie

and I'm gonna put a little sugar on.

I like the sugar and egg wash on top

just because it makes our pie a little shiny,

a little sparkly.

I like the flavor and adding a little more sugar

to something pretty much never hurts it.

All right, oven set at 425. Let's go in.

And that is how you make a flaky, buttery,

golden brown single crust.

And that is a double crust pie. I think it looks great.

I think it's brown. It's delicious.

It's a little shiny from my sugar and egg mixture.

I really cannot wait for this one.

So, I'm gonna let this cool for a little while,

then we can dig in.

[lively music]

So, look at this slice of pie.

It's gorgeous, nice brown crust.

The bottom is nice and firm and cooked through.

The edges, brown, crispy, and flaky.

I don't think you can get a better slice of pie than this.

Let's get a piece from the back over here

and some of that crunchy crust.

And I'm gonna get a little of this.

Hmm, the flakiness you see here is thanks to the fact

that we took our time.

We let the dough rest in between rollings.

We used cold ingredients, we didn't overwork the dough.

All of that focus made us have a nice crispy,

flaky, delicate crust.

[gentle music]

So look at this slice of pie. Look at it.

It's just, like, beautiful.

The apples are holding together, but the crust,

it's a little softer in the middle on the bottom,

but the edges are super crispy.

You can see that crispiness. You can hear it.

Tap, tap, tap, it is firm and delicious.

It's everything you want in a slice of apple pie.

Going in.

Of course, you gotta crack it from the front there.

A little bit of that ice cream.

Hmm.

The crust actually has a little bit of savoriness in it

because of the lard.

And I think that goes really well with the apple.

All the small steps we took along the way

is the reason this pie crust is so good.

Pie crust does not need to be scary.

I think that people who are pie nerds

tend to scare people off.

It is not that hard.

A few simple techniques, a few things to remember

as you make your pie crust,

and it's gonna come out beautiful every time.

The more you bake, the more you practice,

the better your crust is gonna be.