The Butter Mistake Keeping You From The Flakiest Pie Crusts

It seems as if there are a million easy-to-make mistakes to avoid when making pie crust. Your dough might be too sticky to roll out, or so floury it tastes gluey. Your crust might be too fragile to hold up any fillings, or too stodgy to want to chew through. You can even simultaneously burn the edges of your crust while undercooking the bottom. The truth behind this obstacle course is simple. Whichever recipe you use — all-butter, butter and shortening, replacing water with sour cream, or even adding a shot of vodka — pie crust recipes are all about technique.

Luckily for us, Saura Kline, the pastry chef at Local Jones, spoke exclusively with Chowhound to share her definitive tip for a perfectly flaky pie crust: ice cold butter. "The biggest rule with butter and pie dough is to keep the butter cold," she says. "If it's too warm, the crust will be more like a cracker rather than a flaky shell." A flaky pastry is created when small pieces of butter are evenly dispersed and suspended throughout a dough. Warm butter will start to leak out of your dough and evaporate quickly in the heat of the oven, leaving you without those deliciously crisp layers.

We know what you're thinking — you pulled that stick of butter directly out of the refrigerator, so it's not exactly warm. But you'd be surprised to learn how quickly butter warms up as soon as you agitate it, especially when tirelessly cutting it into your pie crust dough. The more you move it, the warmer it will be, especially if you're bringing the dough together with your very warm hands.

Of course you can use a pastry blender, two knives, or the tines of a fork to cut your butter into your pie crust dough, but Saura Kline suggests a less tiresome method. "I like a food processor best," she explains. "It cuts the butter into the flour quickly and does the job as good as doing it by hand." With a few quick pulses in a food processor, your butter will stay cool while breaking up into pea-sized crumbs.

But before a quick blitz in the food processor, Kline shares another genius tip to work smarter, not harder. "Pre-cut or shred the butter and freeze it before using," she explains. Obviously, if you were to freeze a stick of butter and try to cut it into your dough, you'd be at it for hours. But by cutting or shredding it in advance, you're giving yourself more time to incorporate your butter before it overheats.

As a final recommendation, Kline suggests you hedge your buttery bets by chilling your crust as you go. "Once the dough is made, chill it again," she says. "Once the dough is rolled out into a pie dish, chill it again." With Kline's methods in mind, your butter will start cold and stay cold, giving you those perfectly flaky pie crust layers to impress your guests.