18 Tips To Take Your Pie Crust To The Next Level

As the summer months wane into a cool, crisp fall, we have only one thing on our minds. It's neither pumpkin spice nor the turkey on the table for Thanksgiving. It's pies. 

Pies are a versatile, timeless home baking venture that needs to be in your repertoire. You can get creative with the sweet or savory fillings and craft this dessert into a statement at your next gathering or celebration. The key to nailing the perfect pie isn't just about mastering the filling, either. The star of a great pie is in the crust. The base of this critical pie component is often a combination of flour, fat, and water, yielding a texture that breaks off with a fork but has some pockets of butteriness and tenderness. We've gathered some of the most essential kitchen tips and tricks for making an award-willing flour-based crust perfect for a rustic, latticed apple filling or a savory quiche. 

We can't blame you if you'd instead pick up a store-bought pie crust instead of making your own at home. But that doesn't mean you'll have to settle for a lackluster, bland crust. The easiest way to improve the texture and the flavor of any crust, whether store-bought or not, is to seek some help from crumbled shortbread cookies. These cookies have a high butter content and a sublimely sweet flavor, making them perfect for adding to pie dough. 

Crush your shortbread cookies in a food processor or use the old-fashioned rolling-pin-and-a-bag technique. Then, gently press the crumbs into your pie shell before adding your filling. The cookies will release butter as they bake, add sweetness, and provide a critical amount of moisture to prevent your pie crust from drying out. If you want to amp up the butteriness of your crust, you can also add a swipe of melted butter over the crust before baking it.

Who doesn't love an extra flaky pie crust? This characteristic structure forms as the butter, made of fat and water, melts down and releases steam. These air pockets give the crust a little bit of a height boost and also create delicate structures and intricate folds. As a baker, you'll need to control the temperature of the butter since warm butter won't generate enough steam, and the size of the pieces, because butter that is too small will just mix with the flour and not create the pockets.

To maximize this quality in your next recipe, add your butter strategically. The first portion of butter should be cut into the dough so it's pea-sized, while the second round should feature larger discs of butter folded in with your fingers. You'll get both the buttery tenderness and the ideal structure of an award-winning crust. 

Although it might be an unconventional ingredient, you should consider adding suet to your next pie crust to improve its texture. This is a dry, crumbly fat rendered from the kidney region of cows, sheep, and goats. Although it's rare to find the ingredient used in American cuisine, it's a staple for British and Scottish pastry and savory dishes. 

Suet has a much drier consistency than other fats, which means that it doesn't get as greasy. It also has a less porky flavor than lard, which meshes better with sweet fillings. You'll benefit from having fat with a high melting point, which means, like lard, you're less likely to overwork the dough and melt out the fat. If you're baking a sweet pie, it would be best to use a blend of both suet and butter to get the perfect flavor, but you can stick to a suet-only pie for a meat or veggie filling. 

Although getting a little tipsy with a shot or two may make baking more fun, that's not what we're suggesting using the vodka for. You should consider adding vodka to your pie crust because it has a high alcohol content, which does not activate the gluten proteins like cold water would. The water, or in this case, vodka, is a critical ingredient to combine with the fat and flour to bring the dough together. 

 A dough made with vodka tends to be easier to work with and won't make the dough soggy because the alcohol will cook off more quickly than water alone. Most of the alcohol is cooked out from the pastry as the pie bakes, but home bakers looking to infuse more flavor into their dough can consider playing with other spirits, too. Rum, whiskey, and gin can also be used in place of vodka. 

When you need to roll out and shape your pie crust, your go-to tool is likely a rolling pin. But there's another item in your kitchen that's even better for rolling your crust into the perfect shape. A frozen vodka bottle is the key to an ultra-flaky pie crust because it keeps the butter super cold — which slows down the melting process before your crust hits the oven. 

Since you want your pie to have a thin, consistent roll, opt for a bottle with a long, cylindrical shape. Place the dough in between pieces of parchment paper (both to prevent it from sticking to the bottle and to reduce the residual moisture). This will ensure your dough maintains its soft, flaky consistency rather than becoming too wet and gummy to handle. From there, transfer the dough to a pie tin and bake as directed. 

When you finish placing your pie into the dish and trimming the edges neatly with a sharp knife, you'll probably have some spare pie dough. Rather than spoon it into the trash can, you can use up the leftover pie crust with a bit of creativity and a rolling pin. Start by adding all the crust pieces into a ball and chilling it in the freezer to allow the butter to solidify and the gluten to slack. 

You can make a crispy cracker snack with your dough; it's perfect for spooning into hummus or serving with soft cheese. Roll the dough out, slice it into squares, swipe on an egg wash, and add your favorite herbs or sea salt topping. You can also make a little brunch quiche appetizer by placing sliced dough rounds into a muffin or mini-muffin tin and filling it with a seasoned egg mixture. 

The best pie crust is crispy. After all, nobody wants a soggy bottom! And the often overlooked kitchen tool to ensure crispy pie crust might even be already in your kitchen. 

You should use a baking steel to help concentrate the heat on the bottom of your pan. It's a flat, oven-safe pan that many home cooks often cook pizza on. The baking steel conducts heat easily so that it will keep a concentrated warmth on the bottom of your pan. Such is especially true for blind-baking pie crusts, which is often done for pies where the filling either doesn't need to cook as long as the crust or the baker wants to ensure that the filling doesn't seep through the bottom layer.

Although we absolutely love eating blueberry pie, the bottom crust always comes out a bit more liquidy than we'd like. If you don't budget for the moisture of the fruit, you can end up with a pie crust that's soaked through and not entirely distinguishable from the fruit layer. 

For wet pies, you'll need to use a unique concoction of flour and sugar before spooning in your filling. It's a game changer for your pie crust because the powder soaks in any extra juices and will keep the bottom of your dough crispy. Mix together equal parts of granulated sugar and white flour and sprinkle it on both the bottom and the sides of the crust. If you find that this isn't enough, you may need to consider letting your pie rest for longer (since fruit pies may require up to a few hours) or add more cornstarch or tapioca to your filling to help it solidify.

One of the most notoriously tricky parts about making pie crust is that it doesn't cook evenly. The edges of the crust tend to brown faster than the rest of the pie, which can leave you scraping off burnt pieces while the bottom of your pie is raw. To prevent burnt pie crust, grab your aluminum foil and make a shield. Once you cut a square of foil large enough to encase your pie, fold it into a smaller square, and cut two concentric curves to create a ring. Then, you can place the ring on the crust for the last 20 minutes of baking or opt to leave it on in the beginning and take it off for the home stretch.

If you want to protect the entire top of your pie crust, you can also add a sheet of foil to the top of the tin, crimping gently along the sides. It's easiest to apply the tent before the pie is in the oven and remove it after the pie is mostly baked rather than the other way around.