Prize Winning Pie Dough

 I found this recipe when I was still a teenager, in an old and yellowed church cookbook my Mom had in the back of the cupboard. Flipping through, I decided I was going to make blueberry pie. I found a pie dough recipe in the old book and called my Grandma to see how to put it together. This recipe is going to written in two parts, first the recipe for the dough, and later in the week I will provide my technique for making fruit pies, which I learned from my Grandma. 

When it came out of the oven and cooled enough to eat, I thought I had done something wrong, the pastry was crisp and flaky and I thought blueberry juice was supposed to have soaked into the bottom. My dad laughed at me and told me this was actually how it was supposed to be. I've tried to think about all the different things I do that might create this delicious accident. One of the secrets is how you blend the dough. You have to coat the 1 cm square cubes of lard in the dry ingredients to start then gently break them into flakes by pushing them through your fingers. The before and after are in the pictures below.

You can see how important it is to have large flakes in the mixture, not small sand-like crumbs, The flakes melt away to create empty pockets and crisps up the dough around it when it bakes. You can use any fat depending on what properties and flavour you want the dough to have as long as it is solid when cold. The temperature and firmness of the fat is very important. I once did a pie dough with softened lard and it was a disaster, not flaky at all. It was really crumbly and grainy in an unpleasant way. I always use lard for pie dough but you could use butter or shortening. Butter imparts a nice flavour and colour but is not as flaky while shortening provides extra crispness.However, I find shortening a little too crisp and some of the flavour is lost. I find that lard is a nice balance between butter and shortening. After you blend the fat with the dry ingredients, mix an egg and two tablespoons of vinegar with water. Just blend the egg, add the vinegar and top up with water in a liquid measuring cup until it equals one cup. Pour it on the dry ingredients and mix gently so you don't toughen the dough, just enough so it combines. The result should like like the image below.

Here I have sliced the dough in the bowl into quarters and gently gathered it into a ball. You could also cut it into thirds if you were making a bigger pie. Don't gather any dry little bits of flour that are at the bottom into the dough, I always just leave them at the bottom and work the best bits into the portion. I like the quarters because a thinner piecrust has a better texture.

Finally once you have portioned it off, you can use it immediately or put it in freezer bags and keep it frozen almost forever. I keeps really well and its great to have the option to just pull it out of the freezer and quickly have a homemade dessert, much better than any store bought one that is filled with ingredients you can't read. I hope you enjoy making this recipe and keep tuned for a midweek post where I show you how to transform this dough into a fruit pie.