How to choose pie crust ingredients for the dough you want (2024)

Return to menu

If you have just one type of flour in your pantry, chances are it’s all-purpose. “For a classic pie dough, nothing beats all-purpose flour,” Erin Jeanne McDowell wrote in “The Book on Pie.” Even so, it can be bleached or unbleached, and the protein content can vary among brands even within one category. Other types include cake, pastry, bread and whole-wheat flours, to name just a few.

For the most part, there isn’t much of a difference in the final pie product whether you use bleached or unbleached flour, McDowell wrote. Different flours absorb moisture differently, but the biggest factor in your decision is a flour’s ability to form gluten, which typically correlates with its protein content.

“Flour high in protein requires more water and forms gluten more readily, which makes the dough made from it stretchy and hard to roll thin, resulting in a chewy or tough crust,” Rose Levy Beranbaum wrote in “The Pie and Pastry Bible.” “Flour low in protein, such as cake flour, will usually produce a dough that is so tender it tears when it is transferred to the pie pan and develops cracks during baking.” As such, her preference is for pastry flour, which has a protein content between all-purpose and cake flours. (An instant flour, such as Wondra, behaves similarly.)

Pastry chef Camari Mick of Raf’s and Musket Room, both in New York City, uses a combination of approximately 80 percent all-purpose and 20 percent whole-wheat flours. “I do that because I like to see a little bit of color in all of my doughs,” she said, and she also enjoys that it gives “a little bit more robust flavor, too.” While whole-wheat flour is typically higher in protein than all-purpose, its structure inhibits its gluten-forming ability, so you want to keep the ratio low. “You don’t want to mess with the gluten development.”

Return to menu

While you don’t need salt to make pie crust, including a bit will help you avoid a bland result. But should you stray from the standard ingredients to use flavored liquids, fats other than unsalted butter or other flavorings, you might want to reduce the amount of salt you add.

Return to menu

Butter is the standard fat option, but you have a choice between unsalted and salted, and American or European-style (the latter contains more butterfat and is often cultured, lending the crust more flavor). There are other fats you can use in place of or in combination with butter, such as shortening, lard or rendered animal fat (which should be frozen before using to keep it from melting) and even oil (not a great choice if you’re looking for a flaky crust).

The higher moisture content in American butters can make them slightly harder to work with when very cold. On the flip side, the higher fat content of European butters can lead them to melt more readily.

Using some or all vegetable shortening is your best bet if you want crust designs to hold their shape, because shortening has a higher melting point than butter — which also makes it easier to work with. However, shortening lacks flavor, leads to a less crisp crust and browns faster, Beranbaum wrote.

Mick uses a high butterfat French-style butter in her pie doughs. She also enjoys the flavor of goat butter, has used a lot of vegan butter, and has played around with beef fat — “it gets a little weird and greasy,” she said.

Beranbaum has experimented with European high butterfat butter but prefers regular American butter in her recipes. Her favorite pie crust recipe of all time uses a combination of butter and cream cheese. “I love butter, but there is nothing more delicious to my mind than what the cream cheese gives,” she said over the phone from her home in New Jersey. There’s a slight loss in flakiness, but Beranbaum deems the tang it gives the pie crust to be worth it.

Return to menu

All of your pie dough ingredients should be as cold as possible to prevent any fat in the crust from melting until it hits the oven. If water is your liquid of choice, add ice cubes to help hammer this point home. Mick recommends you “tinker with your water measurements.” You want to “ensure that all your dough is hydrated, but [err] on the side of less is more,” she said. Too much water can lead to a sticky dough, too much gluten development and, ultimately, a tough crust. If it feels a little dry in the moment, note that the flour will continue to hydrate if you give it a rest in the fridge.

Return to menu

Adding sugar to the dry ingredients for pie dough interferes with gluten development, aids in browning and, of course, adds sweetness. When it comes to tenderness and texture, Beranbaum has found that using all-purpose flour with 1 tablespoon of sugar added per single crust works just as well as the pastry flour she typically uses.

Mick will add granulated sugar or honey to her pie crusts depending on whether the filling will be sweet or savory. Once you’re comfortable with your dough, she suggests adding spices to it to enhance the flavor of the overall dish, such as black pepper to pie dough meant for a quiche.

Return to menu

Adding a whole egg or egg yolk aids in browning and makes the dough more pliable and easier to roll out. However, Mick cautions that it will change the texture of the pie crust, making it more crumbly and cookie-like rather than flaky. “I feel like you’re moving more into a sucrée rather than a brisée,” she said, referring to two classic French pastry crusts. “Just use water.”

Return to menu

Even though I am a semi-experienced pie baker, Beranbaum’s suggestion to add baking powder to pie dough was new to me. “The reason I put it in to begin with is that my goal is to have a pie crust that was flaky and tender,” Beranbaum said. “An eighth of a teaspoon of baking powder per cup of flour not only serves to help counteract the dough’s tendency to shrink, it also helps to lift, aerate, and tenderize it,” she wrote in “The Pie and Pastry Bible.”

It’s an especially useful ingredient in gluten-free pie crusts, as it can improve the texture.

Particularly sensitive tasters may pick up a slight bitter or metallic flavor from the inclusion of certain types of baking powders. In that case, Beranbaum recommends an all-phosphate product containing calcium acid phosphate, such as Rumford, instead of the double-acting baking powders that are most common. “It actually gives it a desirable flavor,” she said. (A test conducted by Cook’s Illustrated found that “most tasters could not discern a difference.”)

Return to menu

Vinegar and other acids are perhaps the biggest source of pie dough controversy as they relate to gluten development.

“I enjoy the faint but pleasant flavor, but what is more important is that the vinegar’s acidity weakens the gluten just enough to make rolling even the flakiest, most elastic dough a dream — even 1/16 inch thin — after resting for just 45 minutes,” Beranbaum wrote. But King Arthur Baking says “the difference between a dough with acid in it and one without (when made with the same technique) is infinitesimal.”

Cookbook author and food science whiz J. Kenji López-Alt calls it an outright myth. “Gluten formation is actually improved in mildly acidic environments — down to a pH of around 6 or so,” he wrote in Serious Eats. “Adding a small amount of acid to a pie crust will make it tougher, not more tender. To get any real tenderizing effect, you’d need to add far more acid than a crust can handle, giving it a very sour off-flavor and making it too wet to work with.”

Beranbaum, whose book was published in 1998, still stands by her approach with acids in crust. “If people are saying that there’s little difference in adding vinegar, that may be their experience, but it was not my experience and I always test things to the ultimate,” she said.

Gluten development aside, there are other reasons to consider adding a little acid to your pie dough: It protects against oxidation, which is especially important in the professional setting where you’re making large batches, and helps the crust hold its shape a little bit more during baking.

Return to menu

In Cook’s Illustrated’s “foolproof pie dough,” López-Alt first introduced vodka into the equation by using it in place of half the water typically called for. With its composition of approximately 60 percent water and 40 percent ethanol, the full volume of liquid will work to moisten the dough, but only the water is active in gluten development. (No vodka? Any 80-proof liquor will work.) This allows you to add more liquid, thus making it easier to roll out (though the moister dough will require more flour to do so), while simultaneously having to worry less about a tough crust. Much of the ethanol dissipates, leaving you with a flaky pie crust minus the alcohol flavor.

When Beranbaum tested this theory for herself, she was disappointed by the results. “It toughened [the crust] rather than what I expected it would do,” she said. “So the proof’s always in the pudding.” Or in this case, pie.

One thing that all of these bakers can agree on: No matter the tips, tricks and special ingredients in your pantry, making pie crust is a skill that you have to develop, and the best way to do that is with practice. Do you need to use anything besides all-purpose flour, salt, cold butter and ice water to make a delicious and flaky crust? No, but if you find switching up or adding one of the ingredients listed above works well for you, then do so and enjoy as much pie as your heart desires.