Hedden Family Recipes

Pie crust: basic pie dough

Adapted from the recipe of Irma Rombauer:

Rombauer, Irma S. and Marion Rombauer Becker. 1975. The Joy of Cooking, p. 640. New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company. ISBN 0-02-604570-2

This recipe is for a double crust, 9-inch pie or for two 9-inch pies without a top crust.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1½ sticks of butter, chilled but not frozen
• 4 Tbsp. (¼ cup water

Directions:

1. Put flour in mixing bowl
2. Add salt and mix
3. Cut butter into thin slices with a pastry knife and mix into flour. Try to coat each piece of butter with flour so that the pieces of flour do not stick together.
4. Continue to cut mixture of butter and flour with pastry knife until well mixed. Avoid touching dough: doing so might melt the butter.
5. Add 4 Tbsp. water and mix thoroughly.
6. Once pie dough is mixed, gather into a ball and divide into two parts.
7. Clean counter, then spinkle a little water on it. Place a large piece of waxed paper on the water and smoothe the waxed paper so that it sticks to the counter.
8. Place half of pie dough on waxed paper and use a rolling pin to roll it out into a circle a little larger than ten inches in diameter.
9. Turn pie tin upside down and lay it onto the rolled-out pie dough.
10. Lift edges of waxed paper to raise pie dough and pie tin, then turn right-side up.
11. Arrange pie dough in pie tin so that edges of pie dough hang slightly over the edges of the pie tin. Fold back excess around edges and tuck it under the edges or cut it off and add it back to the edges to thicken them. Finish edges by fluting or scalloping or as desired.
12. Repeat rolling steps for second crust. It is also possible for the top crust to be cut into strips to create a lattice.