When you think about it, pie is easy. No, really. It's the pie crust that's hard. Tossing fruit with sugar and spices? No problem. Swapping out apples for pears? Sure thing. Filling is easy. Making pie crust, though? Equal parts confusing and intimidating.
Butter or lard? Ice water or room temperature? Vinegar or vodka? And what about adding an egg yolk? And that's not even getting into the challenge of actually rolling out that dough.
So the Epicurious Test Kitchen decided to examine the perfect pie crust recipe from top to bottom and, with help from some of the classic recipes on our site, we created a brand-new ultimate apple pie recipe you'll turn to again and again.
Interested in learning how to make perfect pie at home? Of course you are. Here's how.
Go for an all-butter dough, every time
When it comes to pie dough, everyone loves the flavor of butter. But an all-butter pie dough can be difficult to work with, because its melting temperature is lower than other fats, making it more likely to stick and trickier to roll out.
So we took a cue from this Flaky Pie Crust Dough and tried a combination of butter and shortening. A butter and shortening combination made for a dough that was easy to roll out, and while that's ideal for tricky lattice crusts, it just doesn't have the same rich, buttery flavor as the all-butter dough. Some bakers like to use lard in their pie dough, but we found the standard grocery-store variety a bit gamey in flavor.
We decided to go with the all-butter crust, stealing a trick from the recipe for Frozen Butter Pastry Dough—cutting and freezing the butter before making the dough helped it stay easy to work with.
Use vinegar for an extra-tender crust
Our pie dough research revealed another method to make pie dough as tender and flaky as possible, even without the shortening. Some recipes add vodka or vinegar to provide extra liquid to hydrate the dough while rolling it out. The alcohol in the vodka and the acid in the vinegar both help to prevent excess gluten from forming, which would result in a tougher crust. We took a cue from this recipe for Cinnamon Crumble Apple Pie and tried cider vinegar. We loved the subtle tang it lends to the dough.
Roll it out right
Your quest for a buttery, flaky pie crust doesn't end with the perfect dough. Rolling it out right is critical. The right technique will prevent you from overworking the dough or rolling it out unevenly. Follow this step-by-step gallery, and you'll be ready to fill and bake with confidence.
