Pate Brisee (pie dough)

I've baked a lot of pies, but I'm not sure if I've ever made a flaky, butter pie crust from scratch. I usually make my own graham cracker or cookie crusts, but I feel like those are much simpler. When I need a "real" pie crust, I usually buy a frozen or otherwise pre-made one from the grocery store. They're incredibly easy, and I always thought they tasted good. I didn't think it was worth the hassle to make my own crust from scratch. Well, all of that is about to change.

I decided it's time for me to make my first homemade double-pie-crust. And not just any pie crust, but one with a lattice top! Woohoo, I'm pulling out the big guns, now!

As usual, I used the recipe from Martha's Baking Handbook, but here is her recipe for pate brisee on her web site (there are some slight differences between the two versions).

It all started with some simple ingredients - flour, butter, and water in the food processor.


After I mixed in the water, the dough started to look like... well, dough. I separated the dough into two equal(ish) halves, and then wrapped it in plastic and put it in the fridge to chill.

After the dough was chilled, it was time to roll it out to a large circle that would fit over the bottom and sides of my 9-inch pie plate. This is where things started to get tricky.

So, I have this nice, flat, very thin piece of dough. Now how the heck do I get it onto my pie plate in one piece, without smooshing or tearing it?

I'll wrap it back around my rolling pin, and then attempt to unroll it again over my pie plate. Voila! (It took me two attempts to do this, by the way.)

Look how well it fits! I trimmed the overhang to about one-half inch, maybe a smidge longer.

Now I had to figure out what to do with the top of the pie crust. I wanted to make a lattice-top, which looks kind of like a basket weave. I took my second ball of dough out of the fridge, rolled it out, and cut it into 1-inch strips. Then I practiced weaving them together on parchment paper, before I transferred everything to the actual pie. It wasn't difficult, once I got the hang of it.

Martha's Baking book recommends that novice bakers weave the lattice top on parchment paper, then refrigerate the dough until it gets hard, so you can transfer the entire lattice top onto the pie in one fell swoop. I tried to do that. It didn't work. The lattice was too large and unstable to move by itself, and it was too difficult to use the rolling pin trick. So I had to undo the entire thing and re-weave it over the top of the pie. It was kind of a pain, but I knew what to do the second time around, so it only took me a few minutes.

This is what the pie looked like (before baking) with both crusts in place. The brown stuff on top is raw turbinado sugar. The rest of the pie recipe will be in my next post!