Dottie O’Connor’s Pie Crust

Submitted by: PEGGY O’CONNOR

Their Food Story:

Growing up as one of eight children, I learned to make stews, roasts, casseroles, and an assortment of other dishes that could economically feed a tableful of discriminating, often simple, tastes. My mother was a patient and kind teacher, and I have many fond memories of sharing counter space with her, learning how to level flour, gently tear lettuce, and countless everyday kitchen skills that have served me for a generation.

In what must have been a laborious process with so many distractions, Mom taught me to make a great pie crust. She used the classic crust recipe found on the inside of the Crisco label, and I can picture it taped to the inside of a cabinet door, just above the art deco stainless canisters. But even with the same recipe and loving effort, so many women claim to have been defeated by this basic pastry. I had an employee at my store in Kentucky who was a fabulous cook and kept me fed for months while I was living temporarily in a sparsely equipped apartment. One day while she was at work, her house was robbed. Among the detritus and insults of the invasion, she discovered that the thief had taken the time to sit and eat a piece of her pie, but had left the crust.

Everyone ate my mother’s crust, down to the last crumb. During a phone call from across the country decades ago, I spontaneously asked her for the recipe, and scribbled it on a blank envelope lying nearby. When she died suddenly a few years later, I knew I would never get around to transcribing that simple, stained note that told so much about this tradition. My astute husband stole it from my recipe book one Christmas and gave it back to me in a simple frame, to better preserve something that clearly meant so much.

Aside from the importance of accurate measurements when baking, Mom’s advice for a moist, flaky crust was simple: “Leave it alone.” The secret to a crust that isn’t tough or chewy is to work with it as little as possible. For me, rolling my crust between two sheets of floured wax paper, which can then be easily flipped onto the pan without excess handling, does the trick every time. The basic recipe, shown in the middle column, is a for a standard, 9” pie pan. The 1 ½ and 2 ½ columns make enough for a one- or two-crust pie in a deep-dish Pyrex plate.

This recipe works with any pie filling. See this recipe for a quiche.

Dottie O’Connor’s Pie Crust

Ingredients:

• Single Crust Deep Dish Pie              Single Crust 9” Pie                           Double Crust Deep Dish Pie 

  2 ¼ cups unbleached flour             1 ½ cups unbleached flour                3 ¾ cups unbleached flour

  ¾ cup Crisco shortening                ½ cup Crisco shortening                     1 ½ cups Crisco shortening

  5 T very cold water                       3 T very cold water                           8 T very cold water

  salt and flour for dusting               salt and flour for dusting                  salt and flour for dusting

  3 12-15” pieces wax paper               3 12-15” pieces wax paper               5 12-15” pieces wax paper

  ceramic pie weights or dried beans     ceramic pie weights or dried beans  ceramic pie weights

  aluminum foil                                 aluminum foil                                  aluminum foil

Instructions:

1.  Preheat oven to 425°F.

2.  Cut pieces of wax paper and set aside.

3.  Mix flour and shortening, first cutting the shortening in briefly with a knife, then with a pastry blender until relatively evenly cut. Do not overmix!

4.  Add cold water, half at a time, sprinkling around mixture, then loosely stirring it in with your knife.

5.  Use your hands to transfer the mixture to a piece of wax paper, gently scrunching it between your hands to press the ingredients together. Once it’s all on the wax paper, gently form it into a ball through the wax paper. Place the wrapped ball in the freezer for a least 15 minutes.

6.  Lightly flour two pieces of wax paper and sprinkle with salt. For a single crust pie, move the dough ball to the floured/salted paper. (For double-crust fruit pies, cut off a bit more than half of the dough ball and place the rest back in the freezer.) Press the dough ball between the wax paper, then roll it out to the appropriate size for your pan.

7.  Remove the top piece of wax paper and discard; invert your pie pan on top, and turn the whole thing over. Peel off the second piece of wax paper, discard, and press the dough into the pie pan, crimping the edges.

8.  Add the pie filling of your choice.

9.  Take the remaining dough out of the freezer, and roll it out as described above between the other two pieces of floured, salted wax paper. For a traditional topping, cut a few vents into the crust before flipping on top of the filling. For a lattice crust (as pictured above), cut the rolled crust into six 1” wide strips. Use your knife to gently peel them off the wax paper, overlapping them over the filling. (It’s okay if they fall apart; that’s the sign of a flaky crust. You can just pinch the pieces back together. No one will notice.)