Grandma's Perfect Pie Crust Recipe

this is my grandma's house and up there that's my grandma's kitchen window we're gonna go inside and hope we'll return a teach you how to live this is the best pie crust that has ever been invented in the history of the world so I'm gonna hand it over to her to teach us all what we have all been doing wrong so please take it away we begin with three cups of all-purpose flour I have it measured in this bowl I'm going to put it in a larger bowl to mix and then you take vegetable shortening it can be Crisco or any store-brand as long as it's of a nice consistency I have tried many different kinds and some work better than others so then I kind of stick to certain brands where triskele is probably my favorite so you take it and put it in a measuring cup that's a 1 cup measuring cup and I as you can see I have kind of mounded the shortening up so it's just a little more than a cup then you take it with your tablespoon and I just use my finger and put it in my flour you can add 3/4 teaspoon salt which I have measured their finish putting on the shortening and once that is completed then you can start mixing rubber scrapers are crucial for yes I like to try to get as much out of the cup as I can okay now I use just a normal fork dinner fork some people there are pastry blenders that you can use but I have found that I like the fork the best and so I start out by just taking the side of the fork and cutting up each piece a little bit smaller before I actually start mixing this is probably going to take at least 5 minutes to complete and so then you just go in a circular motion with the bottom of your fork like this and mix the shortening into the flour why do you love baking well it's a little bit like an artist it gives you a feeling of completion and just appreciation once you see the finished product and also if it not only looks good but it tastes good as well that makes you feel like you're successful and I have just always enjoyed baking probably more than any other household Dewi and I have found that I like making pies because it's kind of a lost art there's not too many of the new generation that feel they have the time to put into actually making a pie with their own crust there are other ways to make pies with crusts that are already prepared in the dirt in the refrigerated cases at the grocery store which are good crusts but I just like to make my own and then I can roll it out the way I want to there's there's never a bad word to be said about anything or anyone in hopes kitchen I also like making other things but what's your favorite what's your favorite thing to bake what's the most fun I I like pies the best I also like to make yeast rolls pecan rolls or sticky buns is kind of something that my family enjoys a lot okay I I don't know if it was five minutes I really didn't time myself I've got a time but this as you can see it's there's there's no big pieces of shortening in it it's kind of doesn't like the cookbooks say the size of peas well some pieces are bigger than other but it's ready now that we can add the water and we take real cold water if your water isn't cold you might want to add an ice cube and then measure your water my water it tends to be pulled from the tap so I don't have to let it run to them and I'm going to measure half a cup and if that isn't quite enough then we'll add a little bit more and you just pour it all in at once and then you take your fork and you mix it around and once you've mixed it around you look to see if there's any flour that is not moistened at the bottom if there is you might want to add just another tablespoon of water which is what I'm going to do but it's better to start and have the dough be a little too thick because you can't really thin it back out well I think most people have trouble with making their own pie crusts because they don't add quite enough water until they're worried about they're worried that maybe it's going to be too thin but flour will absorb lots of water and with pie crust if you don't put enough water in it's not gonna roll out nice for you mm-hmm which is why people get their really thick pie crusts that are quite durable well some people don't realize just how thin they can roll the crust they think that they have to roll it sick because they're afraid that maybe the filling is going to go through the crust but it's amazing you can have very thin crust and the filling stays intact then I just kind of take my spatula and push it down and then I cut it into four pieces because this recipe is enough to to to crust pies to crest fruit pies so I just kind of decide what 1/4 piece is and over here I have my baking mat that I'm gonna take some extra flour that I have here and I'm just going to sprinkle it on the baking mat actually hold on okay I'm cutting it into 4 pieces so that it will be enough for two two crust fruit pies I'm going to take one piece out and lay it on my baking mat which needs to be sprinkled lightly with a little bit of flour and I'm going to take my rolling pin and roll over it to flour my rolling pin take my crust out and mount it with your hands into a nice circle you have to keep adding just a little bit of flour to keep your dough from sticking to the mat keep moving the flour around so it's not in clumps as you can see this this is a real pliable bill and it does hit if you've had it if you put enough water in with your flour and shortening you shouldn't have any cracks and it should roll out easily this is going to be big enough for 9-inch pie shell and as you can see I'm rolling it quite thin I used the foil disposable pie tins because so many times they are either sold or given to other people that way they don't have to return the tin you like giving away your pies or selling them for a thousand dollars at auction and no that is not a joke for anybody who's watching this video these pies have sold for a thousand dollars at auction she laughs because she knows it's true the auction was to to make money for our local library and our church and people bid up our baked goods to give a donation and we know that the items that are auctioned off aren't really worth that kind of money but it's the idea that people are very generous in giving donations I am unfortunately going to press my grandmother out of her humility zone at this point and say grandma whose pycelle for the most money and you find that your crust doesn't quite fit the pie pan you need just a little more crust you just pick some off where there's extra take a little water just lightly put a little water there and add some crust to it so you want the overhang to cover the rim maybe even a little bit over or how far just to cover the room okay over is okay but you don't want to show any men no you don't want to show any metal and also then you want to press pretty tight against the pan you don't yes you can want to get the air bubbles out up so that it bakes well and the there's room for all the fruit alright so that's how we lay down the pie crust for our filming we're going to be using were red raspberries and I buy them in a 16-ounce frozen package I saw them out for one and a half minutes I take one to one cup of sugar and two and a half tablespoons of minute tapioca I mix the sugar and the tapioca together and I have already combined it and added it to these red raspberries as you can see they're all thought out now and you want the tapioca to soak in the juices of the fruit for at least 15 minutes before you add it to your pie now why is the sugar added to the berries well the berries would be too sour without the sugar and it helps to promote the juice and then why add the tapioca the tapioca is the thickener so that it is just the right consistency so that when you cut your pie it doesn't run all over the plate if someone didn't have tapioca how else could they do this they could also add 3 to 4 tablespoons of cornstarch to their sugar what's the disadvantage of doing that I like I do not like to use cornstarch as well because sometimes the cornstarch mixture sinks to the bottom of your pie and many of mine I don't bake right away I put them in the refreeze them to be baked at a later date and I just think the thickening it is much more uniform with tapioca is there any way to solve that problem with cornstarch so it doesn't sink you could thicken your berries in a pan on the stove the corn syrup with the cornstarch and that would solve that problem to pre-bake the filling a little bit if you had to cool and that's how to Philip I at this point we should turn on our oven to bake and set it at 400 degrees and when it's ready then we can put our pie into the oven we have the filling in the crust we're going to dot take a little bit of butter approximately 2 teaspoons and that just adds a little bit of flavor to the filling just lay it on there like that now I have rolled out the top crust and in order for the filling to get air when it's cooking you need to make some sort of a design or just little little holes in the top of your crust why is it important for the filling to get air it will come out the sides because when things start to cook it needs air holes for it to bake properly or you get a blown up pie yes so I have my usual design I call it my wheat design I just make three like that and then I make holes with my fork and make it looks kind of like wheat or an old grain and that way it's allowing many air holes for the filling to cook properly then you fold the crust in half very gently pick it up before you do that you take your fingers or a pastry brush and just go around the rim of the crust and add enough water this will be the ceiling of the crusts with the water and you take your crust and you place it on the top and carefully lift it over and adjust it the best you can and start pushing down with both finger and index thumb and index finger of both hands around the rim to seal the two crusts together then I take a knife and I cut around the bottom of the rim to get the excess crust off I quickly go around the rim one more final trip before I you you can leave it just like that or you can make a fluted edge which is what I enjoy doing so I'll show you quickly how to do that you take your little finger and your index finger of your left hand and your thumb and go like that and it makes a very nice pattern around the pie if you don't care to do that you can just take the tines of a fork and go around it and that's perfectly all right - but this looks and much nicer much more traditional well it's just my design that I like to use everybody probably has a certain design that they like best now I take just a little bit of either water or milk I'm just going to put a little water on here to make the sugar stick to the crust and you take about a tablespoon of sugar I don't always measure I just kind of sprinkle a light coating of sugar on the top if you want to use milk instead of water to make the sugar stick it tends to make the crust brown in places and that yeah now it's ready for the oven alright that concludes the pie baking

Channel: Eat At Joe's

Views: 836,224

Rating: 4.8419294 out of 5

Keywords: pie, baking, crust, pie crust, recipe, grandma

Id: rAxxZIvEKVs

Length: 21min 33sec (1293 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 26 2015