All Butter Pie Crust: A Beginner's Guide

Hi hi! I am just popping in to share this ultimate guide to making your own homemade all-butter pie crust! Making pie dough from scratch can be a little intimidating.

But I promise with this guide as a resource and a couple of steps, we will have you making your own perfect pie crust in no time at all. Having one pie crust recipe is such a huge time saver. You can make it ahead of time, pop it into the freezer for later, and tick it off your list. 

This is the entire inside of my brain on pie crust in one post, so buckle up - it may take a wee while to read but I promise that it is worth your time.

This is a bit of a resource, so I have broken down the post into the following sections - feel free to click on the sections which will jump you around the post.

• What you will learn
• Why I really rate this pie crust recipe
• Important ingredients and why I use them
• All butter pie crust vs shortening pie crust
• Making pie by hand vs using a food processor
• The secret to a flaky pie crust: Laminated pie dough
• Step-by-step instructions for all butter pie crust
• I screwed my pie crust up so you don't have to

If you have made pie crust before and it has flopped - this is the post for you. I’ve got you - and will hold your hand every step of the way, including touching on as many troubleshooting steps and possible pinch points as I possibly can to help you along the way. 

Homemade pie crust is super easy to make once you get the hang of it. It is great to make in bulk and store ahead so that you have frozen pie dough ready to go whenever you need.

Pie dough that is easy to work with is a dream. It just takes a couple of sneaky extra steps to give you a super smooth, homogenous but flaky pie crust.

It settles well into the pie pan, and gives a lovely sturdy bottom crust. This is the go to method that I have been using for years and the recipe that I use to make detailed lattices. It works great for blind baking, par baking, and for baking sturdy double crust pies.

My sneaky step is a series of quick folds to the pie crust once it has been in the fridge resting for about an hour. This is a five minute step, but I promise that it makes such a huge world of difference and gives you pie crust that is super easy to work with and bakes up beautifully and flaky. 

What You Will Learn

In this pie crust tutorial, we will cover allll of the basics that I have learnt / taught myself over the years of being a baking blogger, with step-by-step instructions.

I will cover ingredients that I use, how to mix the pie crust, how to perform the laminations, and how to store and freeze your pie crust for making ahead and using at a later date. 

While it may seem like a lot of information, you are welcome to pick and choose what you need and what suits you! If you have questions please feel free to leave them in the comments section below and I will get back to you as soon as I can. 

Making pie crust from scratch does take a little bit of practice, but I promise you that with practice comes confidence and you’ll be whipping up pies in no time at all!

Why I Really Rate this Pie Crust Recipe

I'm from New Zealand and when we say we 'rate' something - it means that we love it. I have been there- you are super excited to make pie, but get stuck on the most crucial part - a good crust.

I have made this all-butter pie crust hundreds of times, and I promise you, we can make it work for you.

There are a few steps but they are all super manageable and you can break up the workload, and you will be a super confident pie crust maker in no time! Here’s why I love this crust and I think you will too: 

• Easy to make with no fancy equipment. This crust comes together with no fancy equipment, I just use my hands to make it. 
• Super consistent. A huge benefit of weighing ingredients is that you can weigh the amount of water that you put into the pie crust, meaning you can make large quantities of the crust and have it all be the same consistency, so whether you’re using it from fresh or taking it from the freezer, you know it will work for you. 
• Great to make ahead. I often make a bunch of pie crust all at once, and then store it in the freezer. Well wrapped it stores for up to 3 months and handles the same regardless of whether it is fresh or has been frozen. 
• Super easy to work with and won't fall apart on you. I know that a lot of people get intimidated by pie crust - rolling it out, using it to make lattices or single crusts. The lamination step that I include in my recipe gives you a super homogenous dough that is still flaky and light, and really easy to work with - it works particularly well for things like lattices as it holds together so well. 
• Minimal leakage in the oven. A big issue that people can have with their pie crust is that it leaks butter in the oven. This is usually because the crust hasn’t been properly mixed and the butter chunks are too large, meaning that the butter seeps out in the oven. The lamination helps to prevent this. It can also come from the butter chunks being too big and the pie crust also being too wet, meaning that it all flops in the oven and you end up with a pie crust that is both shrunken and has leaked butter. 
• Blind Bakes like a dream. I love using this pie crust recipe for blind baking - it makes the process super easy and streamlined.

Important Ingredients and Why I Use Them

Pie crust doesn’t have that many ingredients, so it is important that you use ones that are of good quality.

This is where you splurge on the good butter - an all butter pie crust really sings with butter flavour. 

• Butter. It’s not an all butter pie crust without all butter. No shortening here. I have made pie crust all around the world with all sorts of butters and they all work, but a good quality butter (one that people accuse you of being mustard, IYKYK), is good here. Make sure it is super cold though before you start working - butters with higher percentages of butterfat do get softer quicker and stay softer so you want them to be nice and cold. 
• Flour. I use All-purpose flour (also called plain flour) for my pie crust. Gluten is a dirty word when it comes to making pie crust, so you want to use a lower protein content flour rather than something which develops more gluten like a bread flour / high grade flour. 
• Salt. Just a wee bit - if you are using salted butter, you can leave it out. 
• Apple Cider Vinegar. Adding vinegar to your pie dough helps prevent gluten formation and keep it tender. Some recipes will also use vodka. This is a totally optional addition, and you are welcome to use all water here if you like.
• Ice water. It is really important to keep everything nice and cold when you are making pie crust. Ice cold water helps with that.

No Sugar In Your Pie Crust?!

If you have made my pie crust in the past you will notice that in the updated version, there is no sugar. I haven’t used sugar in my pie crust in years even though it is written in the recipe.

The reason why? I’m lazy. I often can’t be bothered getting it out of the cupboard, so I don’t. And the pie crust is great without it and I actually love how savoury it is, and also means I can grab a disc of dough from the freezer and use it for either a sweet or savoury pie.

All-butter pie crust vs Shortening Pie Crust

I make my pie crust using only butter as the source of fat. Other pie recipes may use shortening, or lard, or a mix of butter and shortening. I much prefer butter as it has an amazing flavor, and is something that I always have in the house.

I prefer to use unsalted butter for my pie crust recipe. It means that I can control the amount of salt in the recipe. If you only have salted butter this is fine too, just hold back on the added salt in your mixture.

Pie Crust by hand vs food processor

It is super common to make pie crust in the food processor. This method works great, and if you do it this way, go for it!

When you make the dough in the food processor you use the machine to pulse the butter into the flour, which serves the same purpose as shingling it in with your hands. However, I prefer to make it by hand for a few reasons:

• Much easier to get the moisture content right. When you are making pie crust by hand, you can see exactly how it is reacting to the water added, particularly toward the end of the process where you sprinkle in the water a tablespoon at a time. It is quite easy to accidentally over hydrate a pie dough made in the food processor, as you can't see or feel it coming together as well.
• You run the risk of over working the dough. Again, it is harder to see what is happening when you make pie crust in the food processor, so it is much easier to over work the crust by mistake, resulting in a tough crust.
• Cleaning the food processor sucks. That's all I have to say on that.

Step 1: Cut your butter

You want to make sure that everything is kept super cold. If you are cutting up lots of butter, cut it and then pop it back into the fridge until you are ready to use. I like to cut mine into cubes - you can see in the image how large I cut them. 

Step 2: Prepare your dry and wet ingredients

Weigh your flour and salt into the bowl, and fluff together to combine. Mix the ice, water, and apple cider vinegar together in a bowl or measuring jug. Note that you will have a little more liquid than you will use in the pie crust - if you are worried about wasting vinegar you can make up less of the mixture if you need to. If you are doubling the pie crust recipe, you may only need to make up one batch of the liquid.

Step 3: Incorporate the butter

Add the butter to the flour bowl and toss it to combine so that each piece is covered in butter. Now you are going to use your fingers to incorporate the butter into the flour - you want to use your thumb and finger to squish the butter between them so that it flattens out into shingle shapes. I like to start with all the pieces of butter over one side of the bowl and as I flatten them, place them on the other side so I know which pieces have been done. 

I find it necessary to only give each piece of butter one squish, but if you feel like it needs more, by all means go ahead.

Step 4: Add in the liquid

Now you are going to add in the water / apple cider mixture. I like to start with 120g of liquid (do not add the ice). Pour it into the bowl and then do a tossing motion with your hands to incorporate the water. See how the pie crust is feeling and if it still needs more liquid (mine almost always does), add more water in. If there are any particularly dry patches you can hold the more hydrated pie crust to the side and add the water directly to the dry patches. 

Keep tossing the mix with your hands, squeezing gently to bring the crust together. At no point do you want to knead the dough too much, as you do not want to develop gluten which can make your pie crust tough. Squeezing and pressing together is ok but you don’t want to knead it like you do bread. 

You are looking for a dough that holds together well, but is not too wet. Remember it is going to rest in the fridge where the flour will hydrate. You can see in the images that the dough is not completely wet, but holds together well.

Step 5: Bring the dough together

Turn the dough out onto a work surface (no need to flour), and gently press it together with your hands. I like to shape mine into a flat rectangle at this stage as it makes rolling out the dough for lamination a little easier. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and rest in the fridge for an hour before doing the laminations. This gives the dough some time to relax and for the flour in the recipe to hydrate. 

Step 6: Laminate the pie crust

Now you are going to perform three sets of laminations (it’s just a fancy name for folding, don’t let it intimidate you!), essentially rolling out the dough into a rectangle, folding it up, then doing it two more times. I like to use a lightly floured surface, which especially helps if your pie dough is a little over hydrated or has some sticky spots. 

Here is how you perform each fold:

1. Roll the dough out into a rough rectangle shape (it doesn’t have to be perfect). I aim for about 35x25cm (about 14x10 inches). 

3. Turn the dough 90° so that the short side is facing you. 

Repeat this process two more times until you have done three folds of the dough. If at any point it feels like the dough is warming up too much, you can wrap it and pop it back in the fridge for 10-15 minutes but I find that as long as I start working with the dough as soon as it is out of the fridge, I can do the folds all in one go. 

Step 7: Divide up the dough

My Pie Crust recipe makes enough for two single crusts or one double crust pie, so once you have done the final fold you can divide the dough in two and shape each into a disc. To do this, I turn it over and fold the edges in, then turn it back over and flatten with my hand slightly to make a disc.

Step 8: Chill the dough

This is a super important step. You  must chill your dough for a minimum of two hours, but I prefer to do overnight if I can. This lets the gluten fully relax, as well as making sure that the dough is fully hydrated. If you are making dough to freeze, I like to chill it first then transfer to the freezer.

How long does pie crust last in the refrigerator?

I like to make my homemade pie dough ahead of time - ideally the night before, but this can be done up to three days ahead of time if you are storing your pie crust in the fridge. Make sure that it is well wrapped, and use it straight from the fridge to keep everything nice and cold and to ensure that your pie crust is easy to work with.

Sometimes if you have left pie crust in the fridge for too long it will start to oxidise and turn grey - this is how to tell if pie crust is off. If you are unsure when you are going to use it, your best bet is to throw it in the freezer and bring out to thaw when needed.

How to freeze pie crust

The great thing about making homemade pie crust is that it is easy to make a whole bunch at once, and then freeze it until you are ready to use it. Pie crust will keep in the freezer for up to 3 months. I like to wrap it well in plastic wrap once it has been shaped into a disk, then add a layer of aluminum foil on the outside just to help with freezer smell.

To thaw pie crust, remove from the freezer and place into the fridge overnight until it has thawed. It is now ready to use the exact same way you would use a fresh pie crust from the fridge.

Can I freeze the pie crust in the pan?

I don't recommend doing this - things get weird and dried out. You are much better to just freeze the dough as discs, well wrapped, then proceed as usual.

How to scale a pie dough recipe

If I am making multiple batches of pie crust, I often do it all in one go. However there is a limit when scaling the recipe. You don't want to do too much at one time or you run the risk of over working your pie dough. The recipe below makes enough for a basic double crust pie, or two single crust pies. I divide the dough and shape it into a disc and store like that. I like to scale the recipe around how many discs of dough it will yield.

The most I recommend scaling this pie crust recipe by is a double batch, which will yield 4 single pie crusts. If you do any more, I would work in batches. Usually I do one batch of this pie crust recipe at a time if I can. Then I make multiples of it depending on how much I need.

This recipe makes enough pie crust for two single crust pies, or a basic double crust pie with a basic lattice. If you are making a pie where you want a more detailed top crust, I suggest making a 1.5 batch of this recipe to ensure you have enough. Any leftover pie crust can be wrapped in plastic and kept in the fridge or freezer for another time.

I screwed up my pie crust so you don't have to

Let's trouble shoot together.

While this pie crust guide should set you up for success, there are a few things that can go wrong when you are making pie crust. Here are the most common ones. Firstly here is an image showing pie crust that is too wet, too dry, and just right.

Pie Crust is over hydrated:

The dough will be sticky and hard to roll out. Remember that when the dough is resting in the fridge the flour will hydrate, so you don't want it to be too wet just after mixing. Start with the amount of water suggested in the recipe as a starting point and then add more from there carefully.

How to fix it:

You can fix over hydrated pie crust by dusting lightly with flour when you are doing the lamination steps. I find it easier to fix an over hydrated pie crust than an under hydrated one!

Pie Crust is Under Hydrated:

You know your pie crust is under hydrated when you have big dry chunks and it is hard to bring the dough together. Pie Crust that is under hydrated will be really hard to roll out, and will not have relaxed enough to make an easy to work with pie dough. Add a little more water when you are mixing - if needed, sprinkle some water on the dry parts at the bottom of the bowl and incorporate them in.

How to fix it:

Unfortunately it is not as easy to fix an under hydrated pie crust. You can try flicking a little water on it during the lamination steps, but often it will be hard to work with and really hard to roll out as the dough has not relaxed enough so will 'snap back' on you a lot.

Large Butter Chunks in Pie Crust

If you have large butter chunks in your dough, it is not going to roll out evenly and will seem like that it is lumpy.

How to fix it:

Make sure that when you are incorporating the butter, it gets mixed in enough so that all the pieces of butter have been shingled. Large pieces of butter mean they won't full incorporate into the dough, and may leak out in the oven or make lattice work difficult.

Pie Crust is leaking butter in the oven:

This often happens if the butter chunks were too big in your pie crust. When you do the lamination step, it should leave you with homogenous dough. Sometimes you can see leakage of butter from the crust around the edge of your pie dish. A little leakage is fine, but if you find that you are getting pools of butter, it is likely that you have not incorporated the butter well enough.

How to fix it:

Make sure that you do your laminations / folds in your pie crust. This makes it much more homogenous and gets rid of the large butter lumps, flattening them and making the crust much easier to work with and much less likely to leak.

Pie Dough is cracking when you go to roll it out:

This could be because it is too cool, or your dough is under hydrated. I like to press on the dough with my rolling pin a few times to help even it out before I start to roll. Forming the dough into a disc before it goes into the fridge and tucking the edges under means you get a nice clean edge on it too.