Pie Crust 101: How to Make a Perfectly Flaky Pie Crust

How to Make a Pie Crust

The quintessential pie crust is golden, flaky, buttery and…surprisingly easy to make. With just five simple ingredients (and no special equipment required), you can be on your way to made-from-scratch apple, banana cream or pumpkin pie in no time. Let the baking begin.

You probably have all the ingredients you need on hand already:

• Flour
• Butter
• Sugar
• Salt
• Water

See how easy it is to make our favorite pie crust recipe. Its buttery flavor and flaky texture will make it your go-to crust.

What’s the Trick to Making Flaky Pie Crust?

The number-one trick to making a flaky pie crust is keeping your wet ingredients as cold as possible. A perfect pie crust’s flakiness comes from little pockets of butter that melt and steam when baked to create layers in the crust. Here are some tricks to keeping everything cold, cold, cold:

• Use a glass or stainless steel mixing bowl.
• To make sure butter is at its coldest when it’s added to the dough, cut it into 1/4" cubes immediately before using.
• Ice-cold water can be achieved by keeping ice in your water until ready to use, then straining the ice out right before incorporating into the dough.
• Don’t skip the final refrigeration step, since gluten needs time to rest in order to yield that covetable flaky crust. Without resting, you may end up with a hard or chewy crust.

Is Pie Crust Better with Butter or Shortening?

Ah, the great debate: butter or shortening? This comes down to personal preference (and perhaps what you have on hand). Shortening has a higher melting point, making it ideal for creating a flaky crust. But butter has that unmistakable flavor. For this reason, some bakers are partial to a butter-shortening combination to reach peak flakiness combined with top flavor.

Whichever your preference, make sure you keep it cold. You can keep butter in the freezer and thaw in the fridge for a few hours before using. For shortening, just refrigerate prior to use.

For our favorite basic scratch-made pie crust, we use butter.

Basic Flaky Homemade Pie Crust

This pie crust recipe yields two crusts. Use them for a top and bottom, or for two open-topped pies.

Pie Inspiration

Now that you’ve made your pie crust dough, it’s time to get baking. Find inspiration in our collection of pie recipes, then easily add all the ingredients you’ll need to your online shopping cart.