So let's get started.

First off, I'm measuring out one and a half cups or 180 grams of all-purpose flour.

This recipe calls for double that, but we're working in two batches.

The flour goes right into the bowl of my food processor, but if you don't have a food processor, don't worry, I'm gonna talk about how to make this by hand and show you too.

For a bit of sweetness, I'm adding one tablespoon of sugar.

You have options though.

This is a universal pie crust, works in both sweet and savory.

If you want your pie crust a bit sweeter, you can add up to a quarter cup of sugar.

It'll be delicious.

I'm also adding in one teaspoon of salt.

There we go.

We're gonna whiz this up just to combine.

That's nice and combined.

If you're doing it by hand, you're just gonna whisk it up in a big bowl.

Now I need one cup of rock hard cold butter.

I'm cutting this up into cubes.

If you're doing this by hand, it's the exact same step.

This cubed butter goes right into the fridge because I don't need it right now.

This butter goes right into the food processor after it's cubed.

There we go.

Now we're gonna sprinkle this cold cubed butter right into our flour mixture.

Pop that top on.

We're gonna whiz this up for about 30 seconds until there's tiny little pieces of butter throughout.

This is a hack for making it work in a food processor.

If you're doing it by hand, you're gonna add all the butter into the flour and work it up.

Your goal is to have butter that's anywhere from like tiny little pieces to pea size all the way to almonds.

You kind of want some big pieces of butter in there too because they work some magic.

The nice thing about doing this by hand is you have so much control over the size of the butter and you can cheat it into a rough puff and get like pages and pages of butter and flour to give you a flaky, beautiful pie crust.

Both ways work really well, but I have to say, I actually really enjoy making it by hand.

The nice thing about using a food processor is it's convenient, you don't get your hands dirty, and it's fast.

There we go.

All right, we need another one and a half cups or 180 grams of flour.

If you look at this mixture, it looks almost like flour.

It's so finely crumbled.

What happened is butter is completely coating all the flour and it's preventing the gluten from forming just like a reverse crumb.

This is gonna give you a delicious, tender, really great pie crust.

Because now, we're gonna add in the remaining half cup of butter, 113 grams.

Just sprinkle that in there.

Along with the remaining one and a half cups of flour.

There we go, entombing the butter and flour.

I'm pulsing this twice just to distribute things.

We're doing this in two batches because when you use a food processor to make pie dough, it's so convenient and easy.

The problem is the butter gets worked in too much and you lose some of the tenderness of the dough.

It can be a little bit hard.

This is gonna solve that.

If you do it by hand, I will say, it is like the best of the best.

And I'll show you how to do that right next.

Right now, I'm gonna drizzle in a quarter cup of ice water, just all over the top.

Save a little bit.

And I'm gonna pulse a few times.

Quarter cup is four tablespoons.

I'm gonna add one more tablespoon and give it a test.

You wanna have some big pieces of butter left over because that is the magic of a delicious pie crust.

It's gonna look like a wreck, like it looks like powder, but the test is when you put it in your hands, you should be able to squeeze it together and it'll hold its shape.

That's almost there.

You saw how it kind of held its shape, but it fell apart too fast.

It needs one to two more tablespoons of ice water.

One hack that people do, but it's very confusing in recipes, is to use an alcoholic vodka with the ice water.

And what that does is it gives you liquid that won't hydrate the dough.

So it's not gonna activate the proteins and it bakes off.

That holds together really nicely.

So it still looks like powder when you lift it up, but we can work it together and make a magical dough out of this.

This is a versatile pie crust you could use for anything, but if it's fall or the holidays and you wanna add some more oomph to your dough, go ahead and sprinkle in a teaspoon of cinnamon with the dry ingredients.

You could add a little bit of allspice or nutmeg, cardamom.

Any of your favorites are really gonna be beautiful in this dough.

Dump this out onto your counter.

I love working on a pastry mat because you can lift it and move it.

There's never gonna be a counter emergency where things are stuck.

This looks like a mountain of Parmesan.

It's not.

We're gonna make this into dough by pressing it together.

I actually like to use the pastry mat and with the heel of my hands, push it, and in doing so, I'm pressing it together and flattening those little pieces of butter into pages.

You can also just almost do a kneading motion and it really comes together.

The thing is with pie dough, you do not want to add too much water.

That'll take away the crisp, short crust-like quality of it, but you need to add some.

So you're gonna work this together.

It's gonna be a little crumbly still, but it'll all come together in the fridge when it chills.

The little bit of water in there will hydrate the dough and just seep its way into the flour as it chills.

Okay, don't overwork the dough.

You're just bringing it together until it holds into a ball.

I'm gonna divide this into two equal pieces.

This makes two crusts.

So we're gonna wrap this up.

It needs to chill for at least 45 minutes until we start working it.

You could get away with half an hour.

It's okay.

I'm gonna wrap this up tightly.

These are like beeswax-coated fabric cloths that are like plastic.

There we go.

One.

Two.

And we can just wrap this up, pop this into the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

It could be there for up to like overnight.

That's totally fine.

And if you wanna make this in advance, you can freeze the disks of dough.

Just let them thaw overnight and make sure they're wrapped tightly.

By hand, we're just gonna drizzle the ice water in, just like with a food processor.

But here, I'm using the palm of my hand to press this together in the bowl.

It starts coming together, but you see big, beautiful pieces of butter.

And now, the one trick I'll show you is to flip this over and press.

So we're pressing this into like a big piece of dough.

Then we're gonna flip it over and keep pressing, just until it comes together.

This is cheating to give us some layers and lamination and a really flaky crust.

Okay, this is holding together.

Form it into a ball, cut it in half.

Maybe we'll see some layers.

Beautiful.

Knowing how to make a pie crust is so important, but knowing how to use a pie crust is just as important.

In this video, I'm showing you how to make the crust, but I'm also gonna show you how to blind bake this, which you're gonna use for most of the recipes that involve pie dough.

You're usually gonna bake the pie dough without a filling, at least a little bit to give it a head start, so you get that crisp bottom, not a soggy bottom.

No, no, no.

Once your dough's chilled, it's time to roll it out.

I wanna show you a few things.

Flour your surface.

Well, flour's your friend.

You're also gonna flour your rolling pin, and you might notice that I'm using a pastry mat.

This solves all your problems.

A lot of times, if it's hot on the day you're making a pie, oh my gosh, this can melt into a puddle and be really frustrating, but if you have a pastry mat, you can lift the whole thing, take it to the fridge or freezer, and let it chill so you can keep working it.

Okay, we're gonna roll this out, and the key thing to remember is to keep it moving.

You always wanna keep your pie crust movable and not stuck, because once it's stuck, bad things happen, and you will be reflouring your rolling pin, cleaning off any butter that accumulates as well.

Change the direction of your roll, and this is gonna end up being about a 12-inch circle.

You might notice that my pie crust isn't cracking.

It's because I let it sit on the counter for about 10 minutes.

Right out of the fridge, it's gonna be much too cold to roll.

It'll just crack, crack, crack, and you'll be pinching all those cracks together and getting frustrated and not having a good time.

So even though it needs the chill time, it also needs a little bit of warm-up time too.

There we go, all rolled out nice and thin.

I like to roll it onto my rolling pin, and now we're gonna place that onto our pie dish.

You might be tempted, but don't press down on your pie dough.

We don't wanna stretch it.

I want to zhuzh it in, just push it towards the bottom.

Doing this is gonna give our pie more strength.

It's gonna help prevent some shrinkage, which is a pain point for pies, where the pie crust just shrinks when it bakes, and just gives you more control.

Any pleats that happen can just be unpleated right now, and you're really just making the wall of your pie a bit stronger and thicker.

If you have any really long bits of excess, you can just trim those.

Now we're gonna fold the pie crust under itself.

If you have any parts that are a little bit smaller, you can use those excess pieces to strengthen them.

Even though my pie dough seemed dry before it chilled, you can notice there's no cracking happening.

Everything was hydrated throughout, and it's nice and supple because it warmed up a bit.

Finish your edges however you want.

I like to just do a little press with my thumb for that old-time grandma look, but you can use a fork to press it down as well.

And now the next thing to remember is that if you baked your pie right now, it would melt into a puddle and you'd be so sad.

It would just go brr.

What we have to do is freeze the dough.

I want all the butter frozen.

I want everything to be rock hard.

One thing to remember is that if you're making a pie at home and you're short on time, you can make this pie crust a week or two in advance and just freeze it.

Cover it up, of course, so it doesn't get any freezer stuff on it.

But the longer you freeze it, really, the better.

It'll bake perfectly.

Problems happen when you try and shortchange the freezing and you freeze it until it's firm but not rock hard.

Into the freezer at least one hour, please.

If you're making something like an apple or a cherry pie, the whole thing will bake at once.

Raw dough filling the works.

But for most pies, especially the ones with no bake fillings, you're gonna do some blind baking.

You're either gonna completely bake the crust or partially bake the crust so you don't have a soggy bottom and everything is crisp and flaky throughout.

Towards the end of your freezing time, set your oven to 425.

It needs to be nice and hot.

My pie crust is out of the freezer.

Rock hard as we want it.

Now we're gonna protect it so we can bake it.

This means that we're gonna fold some parchment paper up.

Pretend you're back in elementary school making a snowflake.

Except instead of cutting out all those beautiful shapes, we're gonna make a circle.

And then just frill the edges.

Unfold this, place that right into your frozen pie crust and this is a barrier that's gonna protect everything and just keep things safe and sound.

Even though we froze our pie crust, there's still a chance of collapse.

To mitigate that, grab some foil.

I just folded it up three times and worked it into the shape of a pie.

I'm gonna place that right inside.

And this is actually reusable.

I use this over and over again.

I just don't want foil on my pie crust for a few reasons and that paper is a nice barrier in between the two.

You always do this step after the pie is frozen because when you're pressing the foil down, you can mash into that raw pie dough and it'll destroy it.

It'll have all these holes there.

Now I'm gonna add my pie weights.

You could also use dried beans, remember?

Okay, this bakes up 425 for 15 minutes and then we'll continue.

All right, look at this beautiful crust.

It's very hot right now, but I wanted to show you right away.

So our next step is to carefully remove all this non-edible stuff.

So the paper, the foil, and the weights.

Ah, you can see that the outside is starting to take on some color and the inside is starting to dry out.