- 6 ounces flour (1 1/2 cups), you can use all-purpose, or up to 50% whole wheat
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 4 ounces (1/2 cup or 1 stick) Earth Balance vegan butter, diced into small cubes and chilled in the freezer for 15 minutes
- 2 ounces (1/4 cup) ice cold water (put cold water in the freezer at the same time as your butter)
Mix the sugar and salt with the flour. Dump the cold butter into the flour. Working quickly, rub the butter into the flour with just the tips of your fingers. If you're getting your whole hands in there, the butter is getting too warm and you're losing those precious pockets of cold fat that make your crust flaky.
Stop when you have morsels of flour and butter no larger than cornflakes.
Drizzle in most of the cold water, leaving behind about a tablespoon. You might not need all of it. Stir together with a fork. If it is clumping together, that's enough water. See those sandy bits around the edges? Those shouldn't be there. I needed to add that last tablespoon of water.
Dump your shaggy dough bits out onto a sheet of plastic wrap. Lift up the sides of the wrap to form the dough into a ball. Wrap and flatten into a disk. Chill for at least an hour, or up to three days in the fridge, or a month in the freezer. (If you are making this ahead of time, double wrap it.)
Turn it out onto a floured board or counter. Flour your rolling pin. And sprinkle a little flour over the surface of the dough.
Place the rolling pin at the bottom of the disk of dough. You will roll away from your body, applying steady, firm pressure. Hit all the points of the compass from west to east (W, NW, N, NE, E), rolling in one direction.
Now, using a bench scraper, or a metal spatula if you don't have one, flip the dough over and turn it 45 degrees.
Roll again, away from your body, hitting the whole compass.
When you have a big circle that is about 1/8 inch thick. Take that bench scraper again, and use it to gingerly fold your dough in half, and then again in quarters. Now it's easy to lift the dough into the pan.
Unfold it. If it's off-center, gently scootch it into place.
Gently lift the edge of the dough and press into the corners of the pan where the side and bottom meet. Trim your dough to about an inch overhang.
Fold the overhanging edge of dough under itself.
Crimp the edges with the thumb and index finger of your left hand, and the index finger of your right hand.
Now you have that unbaked pie crust that every pie recipe starts with.
Here's me making pie.
