Pie Crust Shortcrust Pastry

This is a shortcrust pastry recipe that is perfect to use for sweet and savoury pies and tarts. Pecan Pie, Pumpkin Pie to the great Aussie Meat Pie!

Pie Crust

There’s no magic ingredient in this pie crust recipe, it has the same ingredients as 99% of other recipes out there. But it’s presented neatly, easy to follow, and it’s simple if you just follow the recipe steps incorporating all my little small-but-important tips! 🙂 This is my “go-to” pie crust that I use for all things sweet such as Pecan Pie and Pumpkin Pie, as well as savoury pies such as the great Aussie Meat Pie. It’s buttery and flaky, it’s tender enough to cut through with little effort with a fork yet doesn’t disintegrate into crumbs when cutting slices of pie. Nobody wants that piece of pie with no pie crust! 😩 It’s made with just butter, no shortening. Which may immediately deter some people who are loyal to pie crusts made with shortening – but before you run away, let me say this: Yes, shortening yields a very flaky pastry – but it’s tasteless. And a well made pastry using butter is certainly flaky enough – but more importantly, tastes so much better. Even doing 50/50 of each lacks flavour. So all-butter it is. And always will be!

What you need to make a pie crust

Here’s all you need:

Very cold butter – your goal is to end up with tiny little bits of butter in the dough rather than melted or creamed butter mixed through the dough. The little bits of butter melt in the oven and create air pockets which makes the pastry flaky.Very cold water – for the same reason as aboveFlour, salt and if making pastry for a sweet filling, sugar.

PART 1: 1 minute pie crust dough

I feel like I’ve paid my dues over the years, making pie crust dough by hand – either rubbing the butter in with the tips of fingers or using a pastry cutter. Nowadays, I opt for the simple, foolproof, 1 minute method using a food processor. OK, so maybe that takes you 90 seconds. Or 2 minutes. It’s still super duper fast!

Part 2: Rolling it out

You’ll find this dough is pretty easy to work with because it’s not insanely short, like pastries used by high end patisserie chefs. (Rule of thumb: higher butter to flour ratio = more crumbly rich pastry = indulgent = pastry very hard to work with = let’s leave that to the professionals). So here’s how to roll pie crust dough out:

Crimping! (Optional)

There’s loads of ways to decorate a pie crust edge. You really can get creative! Here’s one classic way to do it – large crimps. If you do decorate the pie crust edge, it’s best to refrigerate for 20 minutes prior to baking just to re-chill the butter in the dough (because crimping takes extra time during which that butter is softening!). PRO TIP: Thicker pie crust on edge = crimps maintain shape better when baked. Thin pastry = floppage. EASY TIP: Skip the crimp, just press a fork on the rim to get nice imprints all the way around.

Once the pie tin is lined with the dough, you need to decide whether you want / need to bake or not. Here are your choices:

Blind baking refers to when you par bake the empty pie crust so it doesn’t go soggy filled with a wet filling. It’s an extra step that I like to do just for extra crispiness in the base (you’ll see in the recipe video). Do you have to blind bake? No, it’s optional. This pie crust won’t go soggy even if you don’t blind bake as long as the total bake time is 40 minutes or more (which depends on the filling you use). I personally don’t know of any pies that require less than 40 minutes bake time – but I’ve added that as a cautionary note having observed this once during a period of intense pie making (don’t ask😂).

Fully baked pie crust

If you are making a pie that has either a no-bake filling (like a Chocolate Cream Pie) or a filling that only needs to be baked for 30 minutes or less, then the pie crust needs to be fully baked. This is because one the pie is filled, the base doesn’t cook through properly if it is in the oven for less than 30 minutes.

Follow these par baking steps if you are making a pie that needs to be baked for 40 minutes or longer once filled. If the pie you are making will not be baked once filled, or baked for 30 minutes or less, then the pie crust should be fully baked – see next section. I should’ve gotten closer to the Pecan Pie so you can really see how flaky and delicate that pie crust is! You’ll get a good look in the Pumpkin Pie and Pecan Pie recipe videos though. To fully bake the pie crust, simple follow the Fully baked pie crust directions in the recipe card below. And here’s a close up look at this shortcrust pastry used for the base of the great Aussie Meat Pie. The lid of Meat Pies is puff pastry. I hope you found this to be a concise but complete post on how to make pie crust. It’s hard to get motivated to document let alone film a pie crust when there’s so many other visually exciting foods to film!! But finally I’ve buckled down and done it. Now from hereon, I can focus on the fun part – the FILLINGS!! – Nagi x