Perfect Pie Crust Recipe - Nana's secret recipe and tips!

Hi. I'm Gloria Donahue. Also known as Nana by my young adult grandchildren, who have roped me into doing this. Time will only tell whether I am a star or a victim of this. I said to my granddaughter, I hope you're not gonna make me look really stupid in this. And she said, no Nana. We're only filming it. That didn't give me a lot of confidence. But we're moving forward anyway. I've cooked for a long time, especially baking. And I know that you want to succeed at one of your first projects, and that'll encourage you to do better. I'm not an Iron Chef, and I'm sure you're not either. And I use recipes a lot, but this is one of the things I make that I don't use a recipe for because I've made it so many times. I'd give credit to where I got it, because I do very few original things. But in fact, I've been doing it for so long, I can't. And I've taught it to many people. But many friends of mine who cook-- even bakers-- will say oh no, I never make pies 'cause I don't know how to make pie crust. It is so simple I've taught it to elementary school students. A few simple ingredients, a few simple tools, and you'll be able to do it too. This recipe only calls for regular flour-- the flour that you buy at the store-- regular salt, oil-- I prefer canola oil and I think that's the one you should go for-- ice water. That's your ingredients. All you need is a bowl. I'm only going to make one pie crust, so I just need a small bowl. I need some measuring spoons-- in this case a tablespoon and a 1/2 teaspoon-- a cup, 1/3 cup, a pie plate. If you're going to make pies, you need pie plates. To roll out my crust, I use wax paper. I don't use it for too many other things, but I prefer it for rolling out pie crust. I don't need to put any flour anywhere. I just put the paper down, the dough, and my rolling pin. You'll need a rolling pin. Mine is the old-- I keep it in an old paper sleeve-- it's a regular rolling pin. You may go out and buy one that has no little ends to it. There are different kinds. And then you need a flat surface. I didn't have a great kitchen all my cooking life. I had a very small kitchen and not very much level space. I used my kitchen table. You can too. If you don't have a kitchen table that's big enough, use a card table. Anything that's a level surface where you can roll something out and you can do pie crust. It's only gonna take me a few minutes. I don't know why anybody buys a pre-made pie crust. Because by the time you open it and get it in, you could make your own. I'm just gonna go into my flour canister and get my flour. This recipe, I just put it very lightly. Don't pack flour down when you do it. Just bring it up very easily. I'm gonna level it off. My hands were clean, so I leveled with a finger. Always wash your hands before you start. And it's a good thing maybe to have a knife to level if you'd rather do that. This one pie crust recipe calls for one cup and two tablespoons of flour. So we're gonna get that in there. 1/2 teaspoon of regular table salt. If you were going to make a savory pie crust on top of a beef pie or chicken pie or something, you might want to add a little parsley or something now, some dried parsley or some herbs. But I wouldn't dress it up too much. I use this pie crust for almost every pie I make, no matter where the recipe comes from. So it's a really good all-purpose thing. This video is good, because although I've given this recipe to many people, it's hard to explain the next part. Because you put in 1/3 of a cup of vegetable oil. Canola oil is my preference. And you put it in and you just stir it with a fork. And maybe it's 30 stirs. I'm not quite sure how many. That's probably what I'll do. And you want to incorporate it all, but you don't have to go crazy about it. Because pie crust does not really like to be handled. It makes it tough. So it does not have to be perfect. Take a look at this. See how's there's still a little flour? That's OK. That's OK. Now I'm going to add ice water. And here I have it. Just a little cup, just regular water. Put in some ice cubes to make sure it was nice and cold. And I'm going to put in two tablespoons of ice water. Now this is kind of the tricky part that people don't understand. 'Cause I'll say, don't overwork it. First it looks, wow, there's way too much water in there. How can that absorb that? That's gonna be a mess. Well, it really isn't. It will absorb it. And you don't have to work it very much. You don't have to work it more. Maybe 20 turns, something like that. But again, don't overwork it. Don't worry if it looks a little marbled, if there's a little different color in there. That's fine. Even when you roll it out, you'll find it'll bake up fine. This makes a very flaky crust. And you'll notice you don't have to chill it ahead of time. Doesn't take a lot of time. I'm just gonna roll it. See? It's kind of marbly. That's OK, because by the time you got it perfect, you'd probably overwork it. Now this is the interesting part. Because on the cooking shows, when they roll it out, I swear it always comes out nice and round. Mine never comes out nice and round. I mean, you'll see, there's little bits. You roll out wax paper big enough for the pan. I put the ball in the middle. If I were doing a two crust, I would divide it in half and you only do one crust at a time. I put the other piece of wax paper on top. And again, it's nice to have a nice work space like this so you can move out. Now I'm gonna roll the crust. And I just start from the middle and roll out and turn it. I don't measure it. I'm gonna allow the rolling pin to determine how flat it's going to be. But you see, it's not perfectly round. And it's not going to be perfectly round. And that's OK. And the little creases? That shouldn't matter. That should pull right off the wax paper. I wouldn't worry about that either. So I just go back and forth. Because what I want to end up with is a crust that is bigger than my plate enough so that when I take it out and put it in the pan, I'll have enough dough to bring it up and then to make a lip. So that looks like that's gonna be fine. I'm just gonna-- see? Peeled right off. Now this is a little trickier, because it may do it perfectly. Or we may have some problems. If we have problems, we'll work with it. Sometimes when you go to pull it back, some of the dough starts to stick from the paper. And so this is exactly what you do. You just push it away from you. You see, you pull the paper back, and if some of the dough starts to stick, you just push it away. Did you ever see anything so easy? Really, that's OK. We'll fix that too. Now what you don't ever do in pie crust is stretch it out if it seems short on your edge. Because as pie crust bakes, it shrinks up slightly. So if you stretch this out-- you say, oh, I'll make it a little bigger-- no, because when it bakes, it will come back. So you want to make sure you have enough and then you tuck it in. You don't pull it up from the bottom. Now, oh look what I had here. I had some of my pie crust come away from me. I'm not worried, you can see that. Because this pie crust is so flexible that what I'm just going to do is take the piece that came off, I'm just gonna roll it in my hand. I'm just gonna bring that back along that crust. And I'm gonna to turn under the whole thing, not to make it very deep, but to definitely give it a little lip over that edge. And you'll see because it wasn't perfectly round, I'm gonna have more in places than I actually need, 'cause I want it to look consistent. And so I'm going to bring it up. And again, I'm going to roll if I need a little extra piece. That's the advantage of having it plenty big enough to go around the pan, that you'll have some extra to work with. Now believe me, even if you bought a pie crust, you'd still have to do this. I mean, you'd still have to do something with it. It just doesn't bake itself. So now I think maybe I want a little more over here. There are many different things to do with pie crust. And I'm sure you've seen them. But one is to take a fork and you can go around with a fork and you can just do like this. I'm sure you've all seen pies in stores that are like that. You can do different things. This is what I usually do. I just like a simple little thing. Your thumb and your finger coming in, bringing it up along that rim. And this pie is ready to go in the oven. Now you could chill it a while, and I do sometimes if I have the time. Because there will be some shrinkage. It will go in a little. It doesn't matter. It's fine. If you're going to bake it without filling it, you're going to press a fork into it. Because there's gonna be air that comes up under that crust, and this allows the air to escape. When you bake it, you want to look at it after five or so minutes. Now you've heated your oven to about 425 for this. Put it in a lower rack, depending on the recipe. If you're going to bake what we call blind, which is an empty pie crust, maybe put a cream filling or something in it. But again, you put the holes in it. And about halfway through the baking, open that door. And if some little bubbles of pastry have started to rise, you just want to press them down. They will, when it's warm like that in baking. But if you don't and you take it out and it is fully baked, whatever little bump you have is permanently in the pie. So it's good not to go crazy about it, but just look at it. And it's going to be about 10 minutes, depending on your oven. You want it to be brown. You'll recognize a done pie crust. I think the next time we'll make a Banoffee pie with this.