Pie Crust Recipe – A Lovely Mess

Learn to make the absolute best homemade all-butter flaky pie crust! This recipe requires only four ingredients and takes about 10 minutes to make. Who knew homemade pie crust was so simple?!

You can use this butter pie crust recipe on so many different pies like: pumpkin pie, apple, sweet potato, blueberry, rhubarb, peach, or cherry. This ultra flaky, buttery pie crust only has one secret—which I’ll share.

Related: Use my apple pie filling recipe for a classic apple pie!

More Great Pie Recipes

Pie Crust Recipe Ingredients

• All-purpose flour
• Salt
• Butter
• Ice water

I use unsalted butter and it’s pretty much what I use all the time for most recipes that call for butter. If you find all you have is salted butter though, I’d give it a go and simply omit the salt in this recipe.

I also like to add an egg wash and sprinkle on turbinado sugar (sometimes called sugar in the raw) to this crust before baking.

How to Make Pie Crust Dough

In a large bowl, add the flour and salt, stir to combine. Use a box grater to shred the cold butter. This is the secret to the best flaky pie crust! Add the cold butter to the flour mixture and mix together with your clean hands. The mixture will be crumbly, resembling small pebbles.

This should only take a couples minutes. Part of the goal is to touch/mix the pie crust dough the least amount possible as this will result in the flakiest crust. Overworking the dough can make it gummy or crunchy like a giant cracker.

Add the ice water and again use your clean hands to mix until a dough ball forms. Press the dough together, you do not need to knead the dough. Divide in two and form small disks. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until you are ready to use, or store in the freezer if you are planning to use this much later.

How to Roll Out the Dough

Lightly flour your counter and rolling pin. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and unwrap from the plastic wrap. Use the rolling pin to press down and roll out the dough. If it sticks to the pin or counter, dust more flour onto these surfaces.

Once I have the pie crust dough the size i need, I will gently roll it around my rolling pin and then transfer this over my prepared pie pan. Then unroll it from the pin.

Tips & Alternative Methods

• Using a box grater, or cheese grater, to grate the cold butter is the best way to make pie crust IMO. But two other methods are using a pastry blender, also called a pastry cutter, or food processor. For the pastry blender, cut the cold butter into cubes and then use the pastry blender to cut/smash it into the flour mixture. For the food processor method, you also cut the cold butter into small cubes and pulse with the flour mixture in the food processor. With both methods, I would then mix the cold water in by hand—simply because you really don’t want to overwork the pie dough.
• For the ice water, I simply add ice to a glass mixing cup and then fill with water. When I’m ready to add the ice water to the recipe, I measure out what I need from this bowl so it’s truly ice cold when I add it to the dough.
• If you want to substitute up to half of the butter in this recipe for vegetable shortening, you can. I don’t really use shortening in many recipes at our house, so I don’t bother buying it and simply use all butter.
• This recipe will make two standard size pie crusts, a top and bottom. If you only need one, you can either try and cut this recipe in half OR you can make both and freeze one for use later.
• You can refrigerate pie crust dough for 3-5 days. Freeze if you want to store it for longer.