Bigger Bolder Baker Pie Crust

 PREP:  cube 1/3 of the butter and place in freezer for awhile.  place rest of cubed butter into the fridge til ready to use.

Ingredients

• 
  
  7 tablespoons (3 ½ oz/100g) cold butter, cubed
• 1 ⅓ cups (7½oz/213g) all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon powdered sugar
• ⅛ teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg yolk*
• 2- 3 tablespoons cold water

• Instructions

  • Put flour, butter, icing sugar, and salt in a food processor. Pulse until fine crumbs form. [If making this by hand, combine the butter with the dry ingredients with your fingers until you reach the consistency of coarse breadcrumbs.]
  • Mix together the egg yolks and water and add to the dry ingredients.
  • Pulse until a dough forms, around 10 seconds. [If making by hand, knead until the dough just comes together into a ball and there's nothing left in your bowl.]
  • Wrap the pastry in cling wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes to allow the gluten to relax before rolling.
  • Roll on a floured surface to fit your tin or pie dish. A good thickness is 1/4 inch.
  • Bake at 180C/350F depending on how you are using it, as per recipe.
    TIPS

    • Add liquid bit by bit. All flour absorbs water differently, so you might need less or more. You don’t want wet pastry.
    • Leaving the egg out — Replace the egg with 2 tablespoons of cold water. Egg makes it richer but if you don’t eat eggs, use water.
    • Don’t freak out — If you think you pastry is too dry, keep on bringing it together with your fingers. Take care not to add too much liquid.
    • Refrigerate before rolling — Wrap up and place in the fridge for a minimum of 30 minutes. This will help the gluten relax and it will be easier to roll.
    • Freeze the pie crust — Freeze for up to 8 weeks. Roll out your pie crust and place it in the tin. When ready to use take out of the freezer and bake directly from frozen. If you are using it for a pie that normally needs to be baked blind just bake it as is, with no beads or beans. Just bake the crust from frozen, eliminating the task of blind baking ever again. Yay!!!
    • Using for savory — Leave out the sugar and this pie works great for savory pies also, like pot pie.

    Why Your Pie Crust Shrinks

    You are not alone here! This is a really common problem and, luckily, the solution is simple. The answer is too much WATER! Adding too much water to your pastry will cause your pastry to shrink. Think about it! When water heats up it evaporates. So in terms of pastry, that means when you go into the oven, the heat makes the water in the crust evaporate, which in turn causes it to shrink. Makes sense now, right?

    The solution is to just add the minimum amount of water that you need to pull your dough together into a ball. If it seems like it might be a tad dry don’t freak out and lash in water. A fun fact about pastry is that it expresses water once it rests, so it will actually get wetter as it sits in the fridge for its resting period.

    
    

    Avoiding A Soggy Pie Crust

    This is not something you have done wrong, it just depends on what type of pie you are making. When it comes to how to make a pie crust, Quiche, Apple Pie, and pies with wetter filling can have a tendency to have a soggy bottom. If you want to avoid this, you can blind bake your pie crust. This simply means laying parchment in your pie crust and filling with dried beans or lentils to weigh it down as it bakes. Bake it until partially good (or fully cooked depending on the pie you are making). This will give you a crisper pastry in the end.