The art of making homemade pie crusts can be intimidating to a lot of people, but making a pie crust that is perfect is actually very easy with the right knowledge. The most important thing to remember when making a pie crust is that you want your dough to be cold and firm when you are rolling it out. You also need to stay away from more liquid ingredients like eggs and milk as they will cause your dough to turn soggy. You should still use butter or shortening if possible because they will create better flavor in the end.
How to Prevent A Soggy Pie Crust
Most of the time, soggy pie crust has to do with toppings.
Some pies like apple pies and pecan pies are notorious for causing the crust to soak up too much moisture and become soggy.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to prevent this from happening if you use a topping that is full of liquid like stuffing or custard because is just will leak through into the pie making it soggy underneath as well.
One of the best ways to prevent soggy pie crust is to use a top crust and put a bottom crust on the pie before you add your filling.
If you do not have time to make the bottom and top crusts before you put your filling in, make sure the filling does not touch the bottom of the pie pan before you put on your top crust.
If it does, just put foil or parchment paper underneath the pie pan before you pour on your filling.
The next thing to do is to make sure your bottom crust is not too wet by using the right ingredients.
Use flour, salt and a little bit of fat to create a lot of flavor and richness in the end product while making sure that the dough is dry when you roll it out.
Do not use water or milk because they will cause your dough to become soggy.
Simple Flaky Pie Crust Recipe
Ingredients
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup vegetable shortening, chilled, cut into 1 pieces, and then diced into small cubes.
If you do not have vegetable shortening, you will be able to use butter as well. It is best to use it in this application because it can handle the job of shortening better than butter.
It is also important to keep your butter or shortening very cold before you begin.
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.
Sift the flour and salt together in a bowl and then add the shortening.
Using a pastry blender, cut the shortening into the flour until the mixture has little pea-sized pieces that are not to large or too small.
If you are using butter, cut it into small bits as well. With your hands, form a ball of dough that you can just pick up with your fingers without it crumbling into a pile.
Roll out your dough into two 9-inch circles. Be sure to roll from the center of the dough out to the outer edges to create that perfect circle shape.
The circles should be about 1/8 of an inch thick or a little more.
It is just important that they are not too thin so you do not end up with pizza instead of pie crust, but not too thick because they will take longer to bake and taste like cinder blocks once they are done baking!
Transfer the dough to your pie pans, or just place the dough on a cookie sheet and make it into a large pie.
Put the top crust on before you fill your pie but put the bottom crust onto your filling before you pour it in.
Also, be sure to pour in any liquid fillings through a sieve so that they do not clog up your holes and make it impossible for steam to escape from inside of the pie.
Bake the pies for about 15 minutes or until golden brown.
Remove from the oven and pour in your filling.
Cover with the upper crusts and stick back in the oven.
Bake for another 20 minutes or until golden brown again. Remove from the oven and allow to cool before you serve!
Conclusion
Pie crust will last for a long time if made correctly. It is important to remember to keep the dough as cold as possible and do not be afraid to use more fat in the recipe than you are used to!
If you are having trouble with soggy crust, try putting a bottom pie crust on before you pour in your filling. It is also important to make sure that your filling does not touch the bottom of the pie pan before you put on your top crust.
If it does, just put foil or parchment paper underneath that pie pan before you pour in any filling. Always use a fork to finish out any filling in pie crust that is very liquidy instead of doing it by hand because it will result in a mess!