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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.

Is there anyone that can give me ways to USE Chinese hot mustard? I don't want to just dip my egg rolls in it. I love the flavor, so want to stick it in some recipes...maybe slow cook some pork? Thank you for any suggestions.

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.

I second dmcavanagh's comments. This is an eye opening treatise on pizza for anyone that wants to learn the craft. Varasano’s Pizza Recipe.

Basics include proper technique when mixing/kneeding the dough, aging, use of natural/sourdough yeast for crust flavor, etc....

i have known one place here in maine that uses lard. it tastes very crispy (kinda cracker like). they also use meatball sauce as pizza sauce.

dkim68: The July/August 2008 issue of CI is for blueberry pie and bakes it for the first 30 minutes at 400, then decreases the temp to 350 for the remaining 30-40 minutes. I made it last fall and the crust didn't get too dark. But usually I just make it to bake plain with sugar & cinamon, it's that fantastic!!!!!!

I love this pie crust!!!!!!!!! I made some changes though... Since i'm not a big fan of shortening, i simply replaced the 1/2 cup shortening with 1/2 cup butter, used only 1/2 tsp salt and omitted the sugar. I think because of the extra water from the butter that replaces the shortening, I don't use the full amount of vodka/water mixture. Whatever vodka/water mixture i have left over, I simply store in the freezer. The sugar makes the crust brown too quickly and the full amount of salt made the crust way too salty for my taste. This dough is a joy to work with, almost like playdough. warning... the raw dough tastes awful. Thanks for this recipe with all my heart and soul!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I finally make this crust. WOW! I've been making good pie crust for 45 years and was absolutely blown away by this one--as was my husband. It youwas beautiful to work with!!

Thank you!

I'm with PommeDG- it's not the water or the flour or any other magical ingredient. The thing that matters is the skill of the person producing the dough, and the care and attention to detail that they give it.

Some of the Italian bakeries in Bklyn sell lard bread. It's really good and not flaky. I'm not sure I could imagine it as a pizza crust, though. The lard takes away the chewiness factor that comes from the mix of flour + water. But who knows?

i guess you could always ask at a pizzaria if they use lard? just say you are vegetarian, or casual kosher.

it's the water. pizza crust and bagels in NYC are unlike anywhere else.

my mother used to say the bakers got their water from the east river, where mobsters would dump bodies, and that's why NYC bagels and pizza taste so good, but i don't believe her.

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 won't make this pie crust again. I followed the directions and used the exact ingredients including unsalted butter. When I at a piece of my pecan pie, the butter dominated the flavor of the pie and the pie crust. My purpose in making a pie is to have the filling be the primary taste, not the crust. The pecan filling leaked out the bottom causing the bottom crust to be doughy. I feel that I wasted 1 1/2 cups of butter and 2 cups of fresh pecans. I made another crust with just shortening using my old standby recipe. It rolled out beautifully and handled far better than the CI crust. This pie crust recipe just wasn't impressive to me. Using vodka is a gimmick, not a tried and true ingredient, as shown by the hundreds of pie crust recipes available that don't use vodka.