(1) Your suggestion about adding more water is a recipe for an over heavy or hard crust. I deliberately use just enough to hold it together to ensure a nice flaky crust when baked up.

(2) I’m very happy with my standard roller, and rolling technique, thanks. If your methods work for you, great… mine works for me.

(3) Finally if you actually read the description in the post (and not just look at the pictures), you’ll find that I do use 1/2+1/2 in my fat mixture.

(4) I use unsalted butter for all of my baking.

Happy baking.

-cvj

Second, you need to use a bit more water, your dough is breaking up too much.

Third, try rolling it out between two sheets of wax paper. Peel off the top sheet and use the remaining sheet to transfer the crust to the pie pan. The alternative is a pastry cloth and roller sleeve, but they are hard to keep clean if you don’t make a lot of pies.

Fourth, try an Italian roller: tapered on both ends, no roller bearing. It takes a little skill to use, but it helps you to not get the edges of the crust too thin.

Finally, real lard acutally makes great pie crust. Try it sometime (half butter). You will be surprised!

-cvj

-cvj

(*Yes, I know it’s obvious that I wrote this comment more for the pun than any other reason. I’m easily amused…)

- Carl Sagan, Cosmos

I have a sack of apples that need using up. I’ll be making a pie with them, with inspiration from this post. Thanks!

Kristin:- That is interesting, and I will try it some time.

Janet - Good to hear from you after so long. Yes, “vegetable shortening” would strictly be the best terminology (I would not use the word “Crisco” for the same reason that I don’t use “Kleenex” for tissue, etc), but I did the digression on lard since I know several people who still would go “ugh! lard” at the sight of vegetable shortening. Yes, that rolling technique idea is excellent.

spyder: - I’m guessing onions and red peppers, at least.

LL:- Why, that’s just cheating!

Plato:- My mum does not really do apple pies. I do. And I’ll throw down with your mom any time! And don’t get me started on cherry pies….

My mum’s chief baking prowess is in cakes. If her cakes were more widely known, they would sing songs in celebration of her cakes over 1000 years from now.

Best,

-cvj

My Mom could probably bake apple pies better then your mom?

Right consistancy, yummy crust.

I wouldn’t call that “lard,” I’d call it “vegetable shortening” or “Crisco.” To me, “lard” means pig fat.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten about rolling out crust is that you should start at the center of the dough ball and roll forward; then turn the dough a quarter turn and repeat, flouring the board as necessary. Turning the dough after each stroke of the rolling pin ensures that if the dough is starting to stick to the board, you know right away — thus avoiding the aggravation of getting your circle perfect and only then discovering that it’s glued to the board.

Anyway, yum.

I don’t have much time for baking these days, but I did make lemon curd yesterday. Our Meyer lemon tree was loaded with fruit, and I had to do something with it. A few weeks ago I harvested enough lemons to yield 11 cups of juice, and I used most of it to make frozen lemonade for next summer. I think a lot of my friends are going to be getting lemon curd and/or candied lemon peels as gifts this year.

ps: what is in the pan with the pork that your mother is saute’ing???

Steingarten points out that the key to getting an optimally flaky crust is actually to have a distribution of sizes in the shortening/flour mixture ranging from, yes, breadcrumb to the size of small olives. It’s the presence of these larger clusters that will lead to air pockets that help create the flakiness that one wants in a crust. (He explains in decent detail the various roles of gluten and fat in making a crust that won’t crumble yet won’t be unrelentingly tough, either.)

And the Steingarten technique involves mixing with your fingers, too! With the technique he describes, keeping the ingredients cool doesn’t matter. (You do add ice water after the initial mixing stage and then stir it in with a fork, but that doesn’t last too long, and before long you’re back in with your hands forming the balls for the two crusts.) I like this because I find with knives or a pastry cutter that I’m spending a lot of time scraping dough to go back into the bowl.

–IP