This makes one 9" pie crust, ready for sweet or savory fillings.
What You Need:
1/2 cup unbleached white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon Spectrum brand vegetable shortening
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons ice cold water, plus 1-3 teaspoons extra as needed
What You Do:
Mix the flours together with the salt in a medium-sized bowl.
Using a fork or mixer, cut the shortening into the flours until you have a coarse mixture consisting of lots of pea-sized particles (mine looked a bit like coarse, wet sand).
Add just enough water, tablespoon by tablespoon, until the flour is moistened and can be gathered into a dough-ball. You can add the extra water if you need some, but be very careful. If you add too much, you will have to start over again.
Roll the dough out on a lightly floured board until it is 2" wider than your inverted pie plate. If necessary,
pull off dough in areas where there is too much, wet it lightly, and mash
it into areas where there isn't enough.
Using a knife, trim around the perimeter to clean off the edges. To transfer to your pie plate, I used one
of those new-fangled plastic flexible cutting boards. It worked great, after i had the dough rolled out,
I just flipped the whole thing over my pie plate and then peeled it off. You could also use waxed paper
or you could fold the dough into quarters, then carefully lift it, and place it into your pie plate to unfold.
Gently push the dough into the pie plate. Try to ease it in from the edges towards the center
instead of pushing from the center outwards. If you stretch the dough too much, it will actually
shrink when you bake it. Make the dough edge pretty using a fork to flute the edges,or
by folding and rolling the edge under and then hand fluting using the index finger and thumb of your right hand and the thumb of your left.
Follow the instructions for the pie crust in the recipe you're using. Generally, it's a good idea to
prick the crust all over with a fork to make air vents. In most cases, pre-baking the crust is pretty standard.
Try
425F for ten minutes, although the strawberry pie crust pictured below was baked at 475F for 8 minutes. Then fill and bake.
