hey I'm John Cannell and today on preppy kitchen we're making perfect pie crust with all my tips and tricks so let's get started 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 going to talk about how to make this by hand and show you two for a bit of sweetness I'm adding one tablespoon of sugar you have options though 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 it'll be delicious I'm also adding in one teaspoon of salt here we go we're going to whiz this up just to combine that's nice and combined if you're doing it by hand you're just going to whisk it up in a big bowl now I need one cup of rock hard cold butter I'm cutting this up into cubes 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 cute there we go now we're going to sprinkle this cold cubed butter right into our flour mixture pop that top on we're going to 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 going to 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 so 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 [Music] there we go 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 it's so finely crumbled 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 going to give you a delicious tender really great pie crust because now we're gonna add in the remaining half cup of butter 113 grams just sprinkle that in there along with the remaining one and a half cups of flour tuning 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 like the tenderness of the dough it could be a little bit hard this isn't a solve that 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 going to drizzle in a quarter cup of ice water just all over the top foreign a few times quarter cup is four tablespoons I'm going to add one more tablespoon and give it a test you want to have some big pieces of butter left over because that is the magic of a delicious pie crust it's going to look like a rack 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 that's almost there you saw how it kind of helped 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 gives you liquid that won't hydrate the dough so it's not going to activate the proteins and it bakes off that holds together really nicely 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 want to 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 going to be beautiful in this dough dump this out onto your counter I love working on a pastry mat because you can lift it and move it there's never going to be a counter emergency where things are stuck this looks like a mountain of Parmesan it's not we're going to 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 it really comes together the thing is with pie dough you do not want to add too much water that'll take away like the crisp short crust like quality of it but you need to add some so you're going to work this together it's going to 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 like kind of just seep its way into the flour as it chills okay don't overwork the dough you're just bringing it together until it holds into a ball I'm going to divide this into two equal pieces this makes two crusts so we're gonna wrap this up it needs to chill for at least 45 minutes until we start working it you could get away with half an hour it's okay I'm gonna wrap this up tightly these are like beeswax coated fabric cloths that are like plastic there we go one two 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 that's totally fine and if you want to make this in advance you can freeze the discs 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 the 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 and now the one trick I'll show you is to flip this over and press so we're pressing this into like a big piece of dough then we're going to flip it over and keep pressing just until it comes together this is cheating to give us some layers and lamination and a really flaky crust okay this is holding together form it into a ball cut it in half maybe we'll see some layers beautiful knowing how to make a pie crust is so important but knowing how to use a pie crust is just as important in this video I'm showing you how to make the crust but I'm also going to show you how to Blind bake this which you're going to use for most of the recipes that involve pie dough you're usually going to bake the pie dough without a filling at least a little bit to give it a head start so you get that crisp bottom not a Soggy Bottom no no once your dough is chilled it's time to roll it out I want to show you a few things flour your surface well flowers your friend you're also going to flower your rolling pin and you might notice that I'm using a pastry mat this solves all your problems a lot of times if it's hot on the day you're waking a pie oh my gosh this can melt into a puddle and be really frustrating but if you have a pastry mat you can lift the whole thing take it to the fridge or freezer and let it chill so you can keep working it okay we're going to roll this out and the key thing to remember is to keep it moving you always want to keep your pie crust movable and not stuck because once it's stuck bad things happen and you will be re-flowering your rolling pin cleaning off any butter that accumulates as well change the direction of your roll and this is going to end up being about a 12 inch circle you might notice that my pie crust isn't cracking it's because I let it sit on the counter for about 10 minutes right out of the fridge it's going to be much too cold to roll it'll just crack crack crack and you'll be pinching all those cracks together and getting frustrated and not having a good time so even though it needs the chill time it also needs a little bit of warm-up time too there we go all rolled out nice and thin I like to roll it onto my rolling pin and now we're going to place that onto our pie dish you might be tempted but don't press down on your pie dough we don't want to stretch it I want to judge it in just push it towards the bottom doing this is going to give our pie more strength it's going to help prevent some shrinkage which is a pain point for pies where the pie crust just shrinks when it bakes and just gives you more control any pleats that happen can just be unpleased right now and you're really just making the wall of your pie a bit stronger and thicker if you have any really long bits of excess you can just trim those and now we're going to fold the pie crust under itself if you have any parts a little bit smaller you can use those excess pieces to strengthen them even though my pie dough seemed dry before it chilled you can notice there's no cracking happening everything was hydrated throughout and it's nice and supple because it warmed up a bit finish your edges however you want I like to just do a little press with my thumb for that old time grandma look but you can use a fork to press it down as well and now the next thing to remember is that if you baked your pie right now it would melt into a puddle and you'd be so sad it would just go what we have to do is freeze the dough I want all the butter Frozen I want everything to be rock hard one thing to remember is that if you're making a pie at home and you're short on time you can make this pie crust like a week or two in advance and just freeze it covered up of course so it doesn't get any like freezer stuff on it but the longer you freeze it really the better it'll bake perfectly problems happen when you try and shortchange the freezing and you freeze it until it's like firm but not rock hard into the freezer at least one hour please if you're making something like an apple or a cherry pie the whole thing will bake at once raw dough filling the works but for most pies especially the ones with no bake fillings you're going to do some blind baking you're either going to completely bake the crust or partially bake the crust so you don't have a Soggy Bottom and everything is crisp and Flaky throughout towards the end of your freezing time set your oven to 425 it needs to be nice and hot my pie crust is out of the freezer rock hard as we want it now we're gonna protect it so we can bake it this means that we're gonna fold some parchment paper up pretend you're back in elementary school making a snowflake [Music] except instead of cutting out all those beautiful shapes we're gonna make a circle and then just frill the edges unfold this place that right into your frozen pie crust and this is a barrier that's going to protect everything and just keep things safe and sound even though we froze our pie crust there's still a chance of collapse to mitigate that grab some foil I just folded it up three times and worked it into the shape of a pie I'm going to place that right inside and this is actually reusable I use this over and over again I just don't want foil on my pie crust for a few reasons and that paper is a nice barrier in between the two you always do this step after the pie is frozen because when you're pressing the foil down you can Mash into that raw pie dough and it'll like just like it'll destroy it it'll have all these holes there now I'm going to add my Pilates you could also use dried beans remember okay this bakes up 425 for 15 minutes and then we'll continue all right look at this beautiful crust it's very hot right now but I wanted to show you right away so our next step is to carefully remove all this non-edible stuff so the paper the foil and the weights ah you can see that the outside is starting to take on some color and the inside is starting to dry out this is the pesky part that can like ruin your pie nobody wants it to be floppy and Soggy crisp all over this pie is going to go back into the oven but I want to tell you right now it depends on the recipe you're making some recipes might have you just partially bake the crust and we're gonna fill it up and get going other times you're gonna bake it all the way through like for a delicious banana cream pie ooh or coconut pie or chocolate pie all those pies will have a completely baked crust you're going to bake them through but to make them shiny and glossy and a little bit more waterproof we're adding an egg wash whip up one egg with a tablespoon of cream milk or water and now I'm gonna brush that all over my pie crust this will give you a little bit of a barrier between the crust and the filling to keep it from getting soggy and on the outside where you see the crust it'll be golden and shiny instead of just pale and white and Dusty looking and you can see my crust did not collapse at all worked out okay dock the bottom of the crust with a fork we're just piercing it all the way through to let steam release if there's any more water left over here that'll make the pie crust puff up and distort and it just won't be the right shape you also do this after you add the egg wash because that egg wash will fill those holes in and defeat the purpose this goes back into the oven 425 for another 15 minutes then reduce to 375 live and bake for anywhere between 12 to 20 or even more minutes it all depends on if you're baking it to be completely cooked through or not and also like your oven the pie dish time of day you're doing this anything could change the bake time for your pie crust so just keep an eye on it and if your crust is taking on too much color fold a length of foil in half and we're going to create a foil tint for it just wrap it around like this and then gently fold it over it protects the Edge from burning and lets the center cook through but that goes on later [Music] the oven in time for a reveal look at that so beautiful and I want to show you that is how you know a pie crust is done it doesn't stick nice and crispy throughout and you could fill this with anything you want and it'll be delicious I hope you get a chance to use this recipe for some delicious pie and if you like this video check out my pie playlist