Flaky Pie Crust - basic dough

Selam Everybody....Merhaba from Turkey...

Spring is coming. And I love farmer market at spring. Berries! of course some other lovely fruits as well, but berries is most favorite for me.
And it means I'm gonna make some pies these weeks. Yup.. light, healthy and yummy dessert. 

That's why today I make some flaky pie crust in ahead. I use all butter and no shortening for my pie crust because it's very hard to find shortening in local market. If you want to mix this recipe with shortening, use 50:50 of butter and shortening.

Make sure to use good quality of butter cause it really affect the taste and the smell. I use traditional homemade butter for my recipe--just like I always did. It's very much satisfied me. I bought my butter from local farmer market in my neighborhood.

Unlike from my previous pie crust, today i make it manually, no food processor. I just want to taste the different of using processing and manual way.
But for you who want to make it with food processor, you can scroll down a bit to see how to make with processor.

Make double pie crust 8"
Ingredients:

• 350 g AP flour
• 40 gr caster sugar 
• ¾ tsp salt 
• 230 g very cold butter, cut into small 1" cube 
• 1 medium cold egg, lightly beaten 
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 3 + 2 tbsp iced cold water, separated (I put ice cubes in glass with enough water)

Method:
1. In a big bowl, mix together flour, caster sugar and salt. Sprinkle chilled butter cubes over the flour. Use pastry cutter or fork (like I did), and start cut the butter with fork into smaller pieces and try to distribute it with the flour-you must work as fast as you can. When the butter as small as tiny peas, just stop.

2. In another small bowl whisk egg, lemon juice, and 3 tbsp of ice water. Sprinkle the mixture over the flour-butter dough, use fork or spatula to gather the dough until it start to come together. You may need more ice water if it's too much crumbly and dry, but do half spoon at a time. You can use your hand to gather the crumble but try not to touch too long otherwise the butter will melt by your hand's temperature.

3. Divide the dough into two equal parts. And place one part over wide plastic wrap, cover with other sheet then gently flatten the ball and shape into round disc. Do same thing to remaining dough.

4. Wrap the dough disc up with the the plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator. Keep in freezer up to a week. Defrost the dough into fridge a night before you use it.

If you want to use it at same day, keep in fridge at least 1~2 hours before rolling it out.

If using food processor:

Put all dry ingredients and butter cubes in food processor with sharp blade. Pulse few second, stop. Check the butter chunk, pulse again few seconds if they are still in big chunk.
If all butter chunks become as small as small peas, stop the process. It's okay if you get butter crumbles among that flour.

In another small bowl whisk egg, lemon juice, and 3 tbsp of ice water. Very slow drizzle wet mixture into processor while pulse few second. 
Transfer the crumbled dough over working table and start to gather the dough together. In this stage you might need additional cold water, but DO IT HALF SPOON AT A TIME.
Stop adding the water when you can gather the damp clumps nicely.

Knead lightly just to pull them together. Divide the dough into 2 equal part. Lightly flatten and shape like a disk. Wrap each with plastic film.
Wrap the dough disc up with the the plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator. Keep in freezer up to a week. Defrost the dough into fridge a night before you use it.

If you want to use it at same day, keep in fridge at least 1~2 hours before rolling it out.

Check my other yummy recipes:

Simple Apple pie

Cherry galette

Flaky Cherry pie

Strawberry galette

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