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Dessert

Plain Pie Crust for One Shell

A simple pie crust made with flour, shortening, salt, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Plain Pie Crust for One Shell

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour and salt together.

  2. Add the shortening and cut it into the flour using a spatula or fork.

  3. Add the cold water and mix using the cutting method.

Roll and fit

  1. Pour the dough onto a floured board and handle it as little as possible.

  2. Roll the dough starting from the center each time, rolling outward. Do not turn the dough over or roll back and forth.

  3. Fit the dough into a pie pan and bake for a shell or use it for a filled pie.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the crust as gluten develops with mixing and rolling.
Cold shortening
Stays solid in pieces, creating flaky layers that give the crust its tender texture.
Cold water
Binds the flour and fat into a dough that holds together when rolled.

The step that matters

Handle the dough as little as possible. Overworking develops gluten in the flour, making the crust tough. Cold, minimally handled dough keeps the fat in distinct pieces, which produces flakiness.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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