Part one of a crusty story.

"That is a pie crust promise. Easily made, easily broken."

I've never understood that saying because when ever I made pie crust it was never easy to make and because I man handled the dough so much it didn't turn out light and flaky so it was a bit harder to break than say, my mother's pie crust.

The SM's sister gave me a recipe for pie crust and I took a class. Yes, a class on making a decent pie crust because........I love pie! And I wanted to figure this out!

I was always taught that you should handle the dough as little as possible so it would remain light and fluffy, the shortening should be cold from the fridge, and the water, ice cold. Roll it out with a marble rolling pin that you've had sitting in the fridge so it too is ice cold.

Does this sound easy to you? Oh, and before you roll it out cover your entire counter top with about six inches of flour. Six inches deep because by the end after you've added the flour.....too much. Then you add more water......too much.....add more flour....you're gonna need all of that flour.

Well, I have been bound and determined to figure out how to make pie crust and make it easy. I want easy, light and flaky, pie crust!

During the summer we harvest gallons and I mean gallons (for once I'm not exaggerating) of black berries. The SM washes and bags them and puts them in the freezer for us to enjoy later in the year. Notice I said The SM. I hate picking berries.......

I felt like making a blackberry pie today so guess what? I'm a gonna show ye how.

First, we start out with the pie crust. This is The SM's sister's recipe. It's a good one. This recipe will make enough dough for two deep 9" pie crusts. One for the bottom and one to go over the top of your pie.



Flour. You'll need 2 Cups of flour.



1/2 tsp. of salt



Just dump it in on top of the flour. Don't worry about mixing it in. The next few steps will take care of mixing. I promise!



Shortening. Good ol' lard! If you can, try to use butter flavored shortening. The other white stuff is okay too. The butter just gives the crust a bit of a richer taste. Ya know. I'm such a culinary artist. My palette totally knows the difference......



1 Cup of shortening. If you don't have one of these gizmos that's okay. It just makes things like greasy shortening, peanut butter, etc. a lot easier to measure and dump. Watch. I'll show ya!




When you've filled this little gadget (I LOVE KITCHEN GADGETS!!!) tip it over and puuuuuuush it oooooooout. Puuuuuuush!



Plop! Should we sit and try to decide what animal shape it came out as? Sorry......I'm surrounded by toddler boys.....

MOVING ON!



Another cool gizmo/gadget. Again, if you don't have one of these you can use a fork or two knives. This is called cutting the shortening into the flour. Remember the salt? It's going to get mixed in, now.



Cut that shortening! Cut it I say!! Keep cutting until it looks like.....



This! See how the yellow butter flavored shortening makes it all yellow purdy lookin?



Now, here's where I start to go really weird on ya. Pour your shortening/salt/flour mix into a plastic bag. Just trust me okay? It's all gonna work out.



Measure a 1/2 C. cold water.



And pour it into the bag. Then seal the bag letting out as much air as you can.



Weirding out yet? It gets better. This is totally unorthodox. Put your bag on top of a dish towel.



Pull up the four corners of the towel around the bag of dough and.......start beating the living daylights out of it on your counter top. What? Am I serious? Yes! I am! Totally serious. Beat the dickens out of it. This is your moment! Your moment to let out ever aggravated emotion you've been stockpiling for the past month.



This is where I beat mine. I stand between the island and the fridge and I smack it back and forth between the two like a pendulum. Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Dang it feels good! As our grandmothers roll over in their graves.......



When you're done it pretty much looks like this. Aint it gorgeous? Sorry....it cracks me up when people who actually know what they are talking about when it comes to food says it looks gorgeous. I wanted to sound like I knew what I was doing. Was I convincing?

Last step. Throw it in your fridge. Throw it in there and leave it. Leave it for a few hours. If you're in a hurry you can throw it in the freezer just don't do like me and forget only to find out a few hours later that you can't roll out a frozen baseball.

Next post: The rest of the crusty story! Stay tuned!

Pie Crust Ingredients
2 C. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 C. shortening
1/2 C. water