These butter chunks will translate to flakiness as the pie bakes. See that white patch in the photo? That's a flattened piece of butter, and that's exactly what you want to see in your unbaked crust: flat chunks of butter, big and small. This short chill lets the flour absorb the water, as mentioned above, and solidifies the fats, making the crust a bit easier to roll. Refrigerate for 30 minutes or so, and you're ready to roll. The larger piece will be the bottom crust, the smaller one the top crust. For a double-crust pie, one disk should be about twice as large as the other. I like to work on parchment it makes cleanup super-easy. Gather the pastry into a ball and transfer it to your work surface. When that happens, you're ready to add enough of the remaining water to make a crust that comes together nicely, without any crumbs remaining in the bottom of the bowl. Do they hold together? If not, continue to drizzle with water until the dough is cohesive when squeezed. Grab a handful of the crumbs and squeeze. Stop mixing when the dough becomes cohesive When you see the mixture start to form larger clumps, stop adding water (and stop the mixer). However much water your recipe calls for, don't add it all at once drizzle it in slowly. The recipe I'm following calls for 6 to 10 tablespoons of water. That's unevenly crumbly: you want dime-sized chunks of butter to remain unmixed.Īdd ice-cold water as the mixer is running These butter cubes will separate from one another as you mix them into the flour.īeat on a low setting (speed 2) until the mixture is unevenly crumbly. A baker's bench knife is very handy here. This recipe uses 10 tablespoons of unsalted butter. Next, cut ice-cold butter into small cubes When you cut into your baked crust, it breaks easily - which registers as "tender." Fat coats the flour, which helps prevent gluten from forming strong bonds. This first step, thoroughly combining shortening with flour, is what produces a tender crust. (I've poured the mixture out onto a piece of parchment so you can see it clearly.) I then use the beater attachment at speed 2 to create an evenly crumbly mixture. I put 2 1/2 cups (10 1/2 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour, 1 1/4 teaspoons salt, and 1/4 cup vegetable shortening into the bowl of my stand mixer. To make pie crust, first combine flour, salt, and shortening The recipe yields crust with a textural combination of tender shortbread and flaky croissant - with a generous measure of crispness thrown in. I'm using our recipe for Classic Double Pie Crust here, which combines both butter and shortening. And I believe that using a stand mixer to make pie crust is a perfectly reasonable solution for those who don't want to work fat and flour together by hand.Ĭan you make pie crust using a stand mixer? Yes indeed - and here's how. I've used a stand mixer to make pie crust forever, and people have always raved about my crust. But these days, my aging hands, wrists, and shoulders - to say nothing of my patience - are sorely tried by the process. Truthfully, you may get marginally flakier pie crust by flattening each little piece of cold butter by hand as you work it into the flour. Nay, decades, ever since I got my first mixer by saving S&H Green Stamps (and if you know what those are, you know how long ago that was!). Well, I'm going to tell you a little secret: I've been using my stand mixer to make pie crust for years. And for some, I think it's simply resistance to change: Great-Grandma didn't use a mixer, and neither do I! Others say it doesn't flatten the fat in just the right way. Why is that? We use our trusty stand mixers for everything from brownie batter to bread dough - why not pie crust? But never will you see anyone espousing the use of a stand mixer (or electric hand mixer) to make pie crust. The vast majority of pie crust recipes (including those here on our recipe site) direct you to combine the dry ingredients, then work the fat in using a pastry blender, pastry fork, two knives, or your hands.Īs far as using one of your handy countertop appliances, some folks say you can make pie crust using a food processor. Is it a good idea to make pie crust using a stand mixer? Or is it really better to combine all of the ingredients - the flour and salt, fat and water - by hand?
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