Anyone can make a beautiful, flaky pie crust and feel like a Michelin-star chef (at least until the pie is gone or your friends leave).

When the temperature drops and leaves begin to fall, all I want to do is make pie. Many call it pumpkin or baking season, but we all know this is really pie season. Anyone can (and should) make a beautiful, flaky pie crust from scratch. Any discerning palettes in the vicinity of your kitchen will thank you. Pie dough has remarkably few ingredients - flour, butter, salt, and water - and is surprisingly low maintenance if you follow a few simple rules. Keep everything cold, don’t overwork the dough, and don’t rush. Cranking up the oven and throwing together a pie crust will bring light and delicious smells to the gloomiest corners of fall and winter. This recipe is for a one-crust pie, but can easily be doubled for a two-crust pie or to be frozen into the ranks of your kitchen arsenal.

According to my grandma, her dad was known for his pies and biscuits in their Chicago household. While he used lard, I am a 100% ‘all-buttah’ crust kind of boy (a la pie mastermind Erin Jeanne McDowell) and I hope I can live up to my great grandpa’s fame.

Knead the dough right on the countertop. Flour can’t hurt you - just don’t wear black.

Don’t bother dirtying a food processor or a bowl either. Clean hands and a clean countertop are your most effective pie-making co-conspirators … so save the dirty dishes. To me, the most enjoyable part of making pie is plunging my hands into the raw ingredients. Smushing cold, floured butter between your fingertips is an underrated and very satisfying experience. It also allows you to feel your way through the recipe, using your hands to determine the right texture for the dough. See step-by-step photos below!

Ingredients + Tools

1 stick cold, salted butter, cut into cubes
1 cup all-purpose flour
Pinch of salt
4 tbsp ice water
Tools you will need: clear plastic wrap, a rolling pin, pie weights or dried beans, a 9-inch diameter pie plate, and aluminum foil

Directions

Toss the cubed butter, flour, and salt in a large bowl, fully coating each piece of butter. Use your thumb and forefingers to smash the butter into flat discs, as pictured, intermittently re-tossing the bowl to keep everything coated with flour. Continue smashing and tossing until all the butter is broken into flat, 1/2” wide shards. Add the cold water, 1 tbsp. at a time, lightly tossing the mixture between each addition. The dough should resemble damp sand with flattened chunks of butter in it.

Use your hands to press the dough together into a rough, shaggy mass. On a floured surface, dump out and flatten the dough into about a 1-inch thick mass. Fold it in half and flatten again, repeating this process 2-3 more times until there is very little dry flour or loose bits of dough. It will still be pretty scraggly looking and that is ok.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and use the wrap to help form it into about a 1” thick round disc. Refrigerate the dough for at two hours, or overnight, to allow the water to fully hydrate all the flour. It can sit in the fridge for a couple of hours or even overnight

Preheat the oven to 400° F. Unwrap the cold dough and lay it on a floured surface. Pound it with a floured rolling pin to about 1/2” thick. Roll it out to about 1/8” thickness, rotating and flipping the dough as you go, and sprinkling a little bit more flour on the board as needed to prevent sticking. The final product should be a roughly 13- or 14-inch wide circle.

Gently roll the dough onto the rolling pin like a paper towel roll and transfer it to a pie plate, gently lowering and pressing the dough down into the corners, as pictured above. There should be about an inch of extra dough around the perimeter. Fold the excess dough underneath the perimeter of the crust and pinch it together to form a thickened edge. Use your fingers and thumb to press a design into the crust or simply use a fork. Then use a fork to ‘dock’ (prick holes in) the crust, as pictured.

Gently lay a sheet of aluminum foil into the interior of the pie crust and fill with dried beans or pie weights to support the sides of the crust as it bakes. Bake in a 400° oven for 15 minutes with the foil and weights, then bake another 10 minutes without foil and weights. Alternatively, bake the crust according to whatever pie recipe you are using. Some pies do not require pre-baking (or blind baking) and can simply be filled and baked immediately without foil or pie weights.