My mother Maggie always used a home-made crust and would not dream of using a premade one. My oldest sister always uses this recipe too, when making her pies. Even though I do make this crust too, I sometimes take the easy way out and use the prepackaged kind. This recipe makes two pie crusts, so you can choose to make two pies that don’t have a crust on top or one pie that requires two crusts. My mom would double or triple this recipe, place parchment paper between them and place in large storage bag and freeze. This is when pie making became easy, thaw the number of crusts needed and make your pie!
Ingredients
1 cup of Crisco brand butter flavor shortening or cold butter
2 ½ cups of flour
Dash of salt
½ cup of icy cold water (add an ice cube to make it cold)
1 tablespoon of vinegar
Technique
In a measuring cup add water, ice cube and vinegar. In a large mixing bowl add shortening, flour and salt and mix using your hands. Remove ice cube if it hasn’t melted and mix in water mixture a little at a time. Do not over mix or crust will be tough. Refrigerate for an hour before rolling out. Maggie did not have a food processor or the pastry tool to make the dough. She preferred her hands and they really are the best tool!
Chatty Advice
If you do not have the shortening this recipe calls for add butter. If it is salted eliminate the salt from the recipe.
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