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Just made two batches for my Thanksgiving tester pies - beautiful, beautiful crust. Perfect.

Forgive this long comment! I'm hoping it will be helpful. My daughter and I made three savory pies yesterday (we made beef pies, like a Cornish pasty--finely diced beef, grated potatoes and onions). Both my daughter and I make very good pie crusts--I have 50 years of experience--but we are often frustrated at the inconsistencies and the problem of just the right moisture to flour ratio to have dough that rolls out easily, is thick enough to work with and make nice fluted edges, and is both tender and flaky.

We followed this recipe and were thrilled with the results. Our "test kitchen" experiments in the process might be useful for responding to a couple of the comments here. 1.) Use very cold, unsalted butter as in the recipe. If you use salted butter for a pie crust, plus the recommended salt (or even reduced amounts or no salt) it will be too salty tasting for many people. 2.) We tried the full amount of sugar and also reducing the sugar. Even for a savory pie, we liked the full amount of sugar best. 3.) We used the full amount of water/vodka and also reduced amounts, to experiment. Yes, it looks sticky with the full amount, but remember that some of that moisture will go away in baking (that is the function of the alcohol.), so the extra is needed to have a moist,flaky crust, not a less moist, crumbling one. The extra moisture also allows for the use of extra flour in rolling, which is very handy. 4.) Chill this dough for several hours and work fast with it. The high fat content dough benefits from being very firm when you're starting to work. Otherwise you'll have a very soft dough that rolls out nicely but is difficult to pick up and place on the pie tin. (That is one advantage of a pastry cloth. You can pick the whole thing up and put it in the fridge for a moment to chill and firm, then go back to work on it.) This dough can be re-rolled easily without toughening, but still, work lightly. Use plenty of flour to keep it workable--we found it didn't dry the dough out or toughen it, as can happen with regular crusts. (The alcohol again) 5. This recipe gave us plenty of dough for easy rolling to the right size and with more than enough for a pretty fluted edge--no need for patching and no skimpy edges that need foil protection to keep them from browning too much. We chilled them about an hour before baking so the edges would keep their shape.

Taste test: All the pies were wonderful but the one made exactly according to the recipe--exactly--was voted the best by the taste-testers who didn't know how we had made them. Not much difference in any of them, but still, the exact recipe--full amount of liquid and sugar--was considered the most flaky, tender and flavorful. As a side note: Using a food processor made this very, very easy (We also followed the number of pulses as given in the recipe). But, it can be made without a processor if the same cutting and distributing motion is used to combine flour and fat. Baking at 325 degrees for about 1 1/2 hours cooked the meat and potato filling perfectly and produced a uniformly beautiful, golden brown and delicious tasting crust.

Try this recipe for your next pie and make it exactly according to the recipe, without fear. You can do it differently the next time if you want, but the first time, trust the recipe--developed by people with tremendous knowledge and skill and with a scientific not gimmicky reason for their suggestions--and I think you'll be very happy with the results.

Thanks, cjavel. I'll try that. Another thing that probably affected my results was I did not chill the dough prior to baking. I think if it's at room temperature it probably turns darker much sooner, as well as not being as flaky as it could've been had I put in the oven cold.

Could someone please recommend a temperature and time to bake this pie crust? I tried this pie crust today following the baking instructions from my rhubarb pie recipe which specified 30-minutes at 450-degrees. The crust turned out way too dark.

@tyronebcookin

That was actually a recipe that I developed here at Cook's. Completely our idea, arrived at through rigorous testing and thinking about the science of pie crusts! It took over a hundred individual tests before arriving at a solution that worked.

p.s. I do think it does have a buttery taste so next time I will use a bit less. I think this would be great for quiche too.

i never get a chance to make thanksgiving leftover dishes. i'm too excited about repeating the meal of the day before, so i just plop down a bunch of leftovers on a plate, and put it in the microwave.

who needs a new dish when the stuff you made for thanksgiving was so delightful all on it's own?

now that the fridge is finally empty of leftovers, i don't know what to do!

I refuse to use shortening so I make this with all butter and it comes out awesome. Like Zamboni, I chickened out the first time I made this and added only 2 tablespoons of the ice water because I was freaked out by how moist the dough was - the crust came out insanely flaky. The 2nd time I added 3 tablespoons to make the dough easier to work with and it was perfect. I've made it 4 times to date and I simply refuse to use the full 1/4 cup! I don't think you really need that last tablespoon; maybe it's the pie crust snob in me not wanting to work with a completely smooth dough.

BTW, I think they really do have scientists on staff there - I saw a posting for an (unpaid) internship there a while back that required that the person have some background in science (which I have). I wanted the internship so badly but the fact that I have to pay rent and bills made me forget it quickly!

would we have the same of ok results if we just use butter ?

Not long ago, we purchased Truffle Salt at Dean & Deluca. It was one of those things I sampled, returned to, walked away, came back, walked away, came back and finally said "OK already, I give up! I'll buy it!!" The truffle taste lingered in my mouth the whole time I was in the store.

Beware of "sampling" truffles shaved onto a dish. That can be a pricey experiment.

o.k.! exactly what is a truffle? i heard that they use pigs to sniff them out at the bottom of trees bt the roots,is this true,is it like a mushroom,pammy

I bake mine in muffin pans. Slide the 'muffins' into small freezeer bags to freeze and zap in the microwave for a few seconds to warm it up when it's time to enjoy it. It freeezes beautifully and somehow the preportioned serving sizes slow me down from consuming the entire batch in a weekend.