The Best Pie Dough for Perfectly Flaky Pie Crust (+VIDEO)

Looking to make pie dough for the perfect pie crust? Follow the simple 3 steps and essential tips to make a deliciously flaky crust that will impress your guests.

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The texture is incredible; the layers delicately break in a mouth.

In this post, you'll learn some baking skills, such as :

Key tips to make your pie dough very flaky
How to make pie dough with both a food processor and hands.
How to wrap your dough so that you can roll easier later
Tips for rolling it with ease

It is everything I use for all types of sweet and savory pies, such as apple hand pies, blueberry pies, pecan pies, classic quiche, etc.

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📌 What Makes Pie Dough So Flaky?
📌 What's In Pie Crust?
📌 How To Make Pie Dough
📌 How To Roll Pie Dough
📌 How To Bake Pie Crust
📌 Uses For Pie Dough
📌 Frequently Asked Questions
📌 VIDEO: Watch How To Make It!
📌 Printable Recipe
The Best Pie Dough
📌 Pin It!

📌 What Makes Pie Dough So Flaky?

The simple answer is pieces of butter in the dough.

The tiny pieces of butter in the pie dough melt in the oven, creating hollows that lead to layers of crust:

On the contrary, when your butter is soft, it gets pasted into the flour. You will not get the same flaky texture with this:

💬 The key focus is to keep the pieces of butter cold as you mix the dough to make a flaky pie crust.

📌 What's In Pie Crust?

6 Ingredients:

All-purpose flour
- Use regular all-purpose flour.
- Chilling it in the fridge in advance also helps to keep butter cold.

Granulated sugar
- It is not a must, but a small amount is added today for a slight sweetness.

Salt
- I used regular table salt.

Unsalted butter
- Use very cold butter to prevent it from getting soft as you mix.

Icy water
- The cold water helps to keep the butter cold.

Oil
- I used olive oil today, but you can use any other regular oils.

👩🏻‍🍳 Oil is a secret ingredient to make this pie crust - it weakens the connections of gluten in flour and creates such a delightful, lightly flaky texture. The key is not to add too much.

📌 How To Make Pie Dough

3 Simple Steps

Add flour, sugar, salt, and butter to a food processor and pulse until the butter is cut into very tiny pieces.
Add water and oil and mix with a spatula until a ball forms.
- First, rub the surface with a spatula to ensure the moisture spreads evenly.
- Press well and flip with a spatula; Repeat until it starts forming a ball.
Wrap a pie dough and rest it in a fridge for ideally more than a few hours before use.

📝 More Tips With Images

Now, let me share detailed tips on each step that is crucial for making pie dough successful.

Preparation

Prepare icy cold water.

Step 1: Add flour, sugar, salt, and butter to a food processor and pulse until the butter is cut into very tiny pieces.

👩🏻‍🍳 It is very important to use cold butter.

butter, flour, sugar and salt in a food processor

Pulse.

pulsing butter, flour, sugar and salt in a food processor

💬 The size of the butter should be between rice grains to black peppers. You can not fix it once you cut butter too small - Check the size when you are unsure, and pulse more if necessary.

Move it into a bowl.

Check with your hands and squish if you find some big pieces:

butter, flour, salt and sugar in a bowl to make pie dough

up-close of processed butter, flour, salt and sugar

👩🏻‍🍳 If you feel the butter is getting too soft at this point, I recommend chilling the bowl in the fridge for some time to prevent the butter from getting pasted after you add water and mix.

When you do it by hand:

If you don't have a food processor, don't worry! You can still make it by hand. You can use a dough blender to cut butter:

💬 Note that It takes a lot more time to finish the process with the dough blender. I recommend cutting your butter into very small pieces in advance and chilling it in a fridge until right before using it.

Step 2: Add water and oil and mix until it forms a ball.

I like to combine water and oil in advance:

You can add all of it at once or divide it two times.

adding oil and water to flours to make pie dough

When you mix them, follow the 2 steps:

Rub the surface, flip the dough with a spatula, and repeat it until you see that the liquids are spread evenly in the flour.

mixing flours and liquids to make pie dough

Press the surface well with a spatula or hand and flip. Repeat it until it forms a ball.
- It'll look very powdery initially, but no worry! It'll slowly come together as you repeat this process.

🙅🏻‍♀️ Do not add any more water - it creates more glutens which makes the crust unpleasantly crunchier!

⚠️ Try not to touch the dough directly by hand when it is warm since the heat can slowly melt the butter. Use only a spatula or wear a glove to avoid that.

How to judge if it's done

It still looks slightly powdery but comes together.
Stop before it starts getting sticky. (That means the butter is melted partially.)

💬 This recipe is enough to make 1 10-inch pie with a double crust or 2 10-inch pies with a single crust. Feel free to make the double or half amount, depending on the size of your pies!

Step 3: Wrap a pie dough and chill it in the fridge, ideally for more than a few hours.

How to wrap and chill the pie dough

Divide it in half for double crusts. Wrap each of them with plastic wrap.

Roll it over the plastic wrap to make a round shape (Or any shape of your pie plate) with even thickness.
- By doing this, it'll be easier to roll the dough later.

rolling pie dough wrapped in plastic wrap

Pinch all around the edge and smooth it out by spinning it by hand.
- By doing it, the edge is going to crack less as you roll the dough later.

pinching the edge of pie dough wrapped in plastic wrap

smoothing the edge of pie dough wrapped in plastic wrap

And done! Now, chill the dough.

The reasons we need to chill the pie dough before rolling

We can remain the butter pieces: When the dough is just made, it is too soft to roll. (Again, we want to let the butter remain as small pieces for a flaky pie crust!)
You can roll it easier: The gluten in flour gets weakened after resting it in the fridge. You'll feel less resistance as you roll the dough when the glutens is rested.

💡 While I'm chilling the dough, I usually work on the pie filling or other preps. Or you can make it the day before and let it rest overnight.

📌 How To Roll Pie Dough

The 3 steps

Dust bread flour all over the dough and a working surface.
Push the dough gently with a rolling pin to soften it.
Roll into an ideal thickness.

📝 Tips With Images

Step 1: Dust bread flour.

Bread flour

I like to use bread flour to dust on the working surface because:

It spreads more evenly on the working surface than other flour, such as cake and all-purpose flour.
It also does not stick to the dough as much as other flours.

If you do not have bread flour at the moment, no problem; you can use all-purpose flour instead. It won't make a significant difference.

I am using parchment paper today but you can also roll it on a table directly.

Step 2: Push the dough gently.

First, push the dough gently to wake it up and make it soften:

Turn the dough 90 degrees and repeat it.

Pinch the edge; whenever you see it starts cracking:

pinching the edge of pie dough on parchment paper

Step 3: Roll the dough.

Start rolling when you feel the dough is soft enough:

Tips for rolling the dough

Apply bread flour frequently on the way so the dough does not stick to the parchment paper and a rolling pin.
When you roll the dough, add the same pressures from both hands to make evenly spread dough.
I recommend rolling it very thin (0.1 inch | 2 - 3 mm) to maximize the amazing crispiness of the crust.
The butter in the dough gets softened quickly when you roll the dough in a warm environment. Work on it in a cooling space and move as fast as possible.
Chill the dough on the way whenever you feel it is getting too sticky to handle.

After that, follow the pie recipe you are using to cut the dough or set it into pie plates.

Check out my pie recipes to get ideas for the filling!

📌 How To Bake Pie Crust

Chill the dough before baking it

Ok, now I feel I've been a bit psychotic to repeat "CHILL MORE FOR BUTTERRR" But it's that important, so bear with me😅

Chill the dough one last time for one hour or longer.

The benefits of chilling the dough before baking

Due to the rested gluten in flour and cold butter, the dough doesn't shrink and slide down too much in the oven. Some shrinkage still happens but this process hugely helps to minimize it.
The cold butter doesn't melt as quickly as soft butter and creates a flakier texture.

The baking time and temperature

If you are using a particular recipe, follow the baking time and temperature.

Typically, I like to bake it at 375 F | 190 C for 30 - 60 minutes, depending on the size, filling, etc.

📌 Uses For Pie Dough

This is the only pie dough I use for all kinds of pies - from desserts to savory food, such as:

Apple pie
Apple crumble
Blueberry pie
Hand pies
Cheesecake pie
Quiche
Pecan pie
Chocolate pie

... and many more!

Last year, on Christmas, I made the apple hand pies using this crust. My mother-in-law confessed she's not into pies but really loved this one. She said it's the best pie crust she's had!

Last year on Thanksgiving, we had bacon & spinach quiches, chocolate pecan pies, apple crumbles, and a big caramel rum apple pie... all made from this one dough!

Pies are for everyone, and there are so many ways to enjoy them. I hope you'll try it out to create a special pie for precious memories with your special people.

📌 Frequently Asked Questions

How should I store pie dough?

Wrap tightly and store it in a fridge for up to 5 days or in the freezer for a few months.

What flour should I dust on a working surface when I roll the dough?

I recommend bread flour. It does not get absorbed into the dough as much as cake flour and all-purpose flour. Also, it's easier to spread thin since it's less lumpy!

Should I blind-bake with this pie dough?

It depends on the recipes or what filling goes into the crust. (If you only need to bake your filling for a short time, you'll need to blind-bake the crust ahead.) Follow the instructions of the recipe you are using!