Homemade Pie Crust

This is the first post in a series of posts about pie, which I absolutely love.  This first post will be about the homemade crust.  My second post will be about the banana cream pie...that's right, lovely, delicious, decadent, banana cream pie.

Now, to be honest, I've always shied away from homemade crusts because they can be so completely hard to make.  If you handle them too much, they become dense, hard, and not delicious at all.  This recipe however is a bit different in my opinion regarding taste and ingredient list-the crust rises a bit more than I'm used to because of the cake flour.  It can be made many different methods (with a stand mixer, hand-held mixer, mixed by hand, etc) and is pretty easy to whip up.  

Ingredients

1 c. cake flour

1 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 t. salt

3/4 c. cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/3 inch cubes

7 T. of ice water or heavy cream, or 2 egg whites, lightly beaten

Directions

1.  In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, mix both flours and the salt on slow for 30 seconds.

2.  Add the butter and combine it with the flour on low to medium for 1 minute.

3.  Add the liquid and mix the dough on low to medium speed for 40 seconds to 2 minutes, until it looks like gravel.  If the mixture is still powdery after two minutes, pinch a small amount together; if it falls apart, add 2 more tablespoons of liquid; if it clumps together, continue mixing.

4.  Flatten the dough into a disk.  If not using right away, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate.

5.  Roll dough until it is approximately 2 inches wider than your pie plate.

6.  Place over pie dough and cut around the edge so there is an extra inch of dough hanging over the edge.

7.  Tuck the extra dough under to form a thick boarder.

8.  To flute the edges, press against both sides of the rim of the pie pan to get the pastry to rise up above it.  Press with 2 fingers on 1 side and 1 finger on the other to form the fluted edge.

9.  Blind bake the crust in a pre-heated 400 F oven with pie weights or beans lining the bottom for 15 minutes.  Take the weights out of the bottom and bake for another 15 minutes until golden brown.  Thinner shells and pastry with sugar brown more quickly.

To be honest, my boyfriend has made this shell before for a homemade apple pie and it was better.  We were discussing why and we've come to this conclusion: his crusts were thinner because he made a bottom and top from one batch, which I think made it more like a traditional crust.  The other thing I will do in the future is add 1/2 c. white sugar to the flours to make the crust sweet.  I think that I'm going to practicing pie crusts in the future, so look for those posts and learn from my mistakes!