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Why You’ll Love My Recipe
No time to head to the store for frozen crusts, or just really want the satisfaction of making your pie entirely from scratch? Look no further! This easy recipe for a single pie crust uses just a few ingredients and can be doubled if you need more crusts.
Why not use this recipe to make your very own Impossible Saskatoon Pie? Or learn how to make The Best Pie Crust Recipe instead, which works perfectly with this Sugar Cream Pie!
Karlynn’s Recipe Notes
- Skill Level: Very simple.
- Total Time Required: The crust can be made in under an hour. If the pie recipe you plan to use requires a prebaked crust, that will add a few minutes.
- Tools You’ll Need: For this pie crust recipe, you’ll need a 9″ pie plate, a rolling pin, and a bowl to mix your ingredients. You’ll also want parchment paper and pie weights or dried beans to help the crust hold its shape while you prebake it.
- Other helpful items: a nonstick mat to roll your dough out on, a pastry cutter for blending your fat into your dry mixture, and a silicone edge guard or some tinfoil to keep your pie crust’s edges from overbaking.
What You’ll Need For Ingredients
Fat: Shortening, butter, or margarine. They all produce slightly different results. A lot of people use shortening (lard, Crisco, etc.) while others always use butter. Try different fats and see which you like best!
Ice Cold Water: Cold water keeps the shortening firm, which helps create the air bubbles that give you a flaky, crisp pie crust.
Salt and all-purpose flour: Nothing fancy needed here. Just the basics.
How To Make Betty Crocker Pie Crust
This is just a quick overview of the recipe. The full list of ingredients and step-by-step instructions are in the recipe card below.
- Mix your flour and salt in a medium bowl. Cut in your shortening with a fork or pastry cutter, until you’ve got a mixture with pea-sized lumps.
- Sprinkle in ice cold water and stir mixture with a fork until the flour mixture starts to come away from the sides of the bowl and you’re able to form a ball. Wrap your ball of pastry with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge to chill for at least approximately 45 minutes. The dough needs to be firm but still pliable.
- Roll the dough into a circle that will overlap the 9″ pie plate by two inches (about 11″ across). Fold your dough into quarters.
- Preheat your oven to 400F. Unfold your crust into the pie plate. Chill for ten minutes in fridge while oven preheats and then line crust with a circle of parchment paper and fill halfway with pie weights or beans.
- Bake the crust for just long enough to get the crust golden. Take crust out of oven and remove the weights. Put the crust back in the oven (no weights) and bake for 6-8 more minutes if you’ll be making a filled pie, 15 minutes longer if you are planning to make a cream or refrigerated pie.
Karlynn’s Tips and Tricks for Making Perfect Betty Crocker Pie Crust
The Colder The Better: Keep your shortening, your water, and your completed pie crust chilled right up until you pop it into the oven. You can even chill your bowl and your utensils before getting started!
Don’t Overhandle the Dough: You want there to be little lumps of fat in there. If you handle the dough too much, it’ll get mushy and soggy and it won’t give you a good crust.
Make sure to lightly dust your rolling pin and your rolling surface with flour so that the dough doesn’t stick to either.
Storage Instructions
Ideally, this is the kind of recipe you use right away but you could premake the dough and store it wrapped in plastic wrap in the fridge for a day or so. If it chills much longer than the original 45 minutes the recipe calls for, you’ll need to let it warm up for a few minutes before trying to roll it out, otherwise it will crack. I wouldn’t recommend freezing this dough.
More Pie and Pie Crust Recipes
We have lots more delicious Pie and crust recipes! If you’re feeling like something classic and traditional, try a Classic Apple Pie or Blueberry Pie.
Maybe you’re looking for something a bit different? Check out this Sour Cream Raisin Pie or Lemon Chess Pie.
This Graham Cracker Crust recipe is great if you’re making a cream pie like Coconut Cream Pie or Peaches & Cream Pie.
If you don’t want a traditionally-shaped pie, try Campfire Cherry Hand Pies.
There you go, a quick and easy pie crust recipe that won’t leave you frustrated. Try it with one of the pie recipes I’ve mentioned above, or one of your own recipes, and let me know how it turns out.
Happy Baking!
Karlynn
Betty Crocker Pie Crust
Ingredients
- 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/3 cup shortening, (Cold)
- 3 to 5 tablespoons ice-cold water
Instructions
- In medium bowl, mix flour and salt.
- Cut in shortening, using pastry blender or fork, until mixture forms coarse crumbs the size of small peas.
- Sprinkle with water, 1 tablespoon at a time, tossing with fork until all flour is moistened and pastry almost leaves side of bowl (1 to 2 teaspoons more water can be added if necessary).
- Gather the pastry into a ball. Shape into flattened round on lightly floured surface. Wrap flattened round in plastic wrap and refrigerate 45 minutes or until dough is firm and cold, yet pliable.
- This allows the shortening to become slightly firm, which helps make the baked pastry flaky. If it is refrigerated longer, let the pastry soften slightly at room temperature before rolling it out.
- Using a floured rolling pin, roll pastry on lightly floured surface (or pastry board with floured pastry cloth) into a circle 2 inches larger than upside-down 9-inch glass pie plate. Fold pastry into fourths and place in pie plate or roll pastry loosely around rolling pin and transfer to pie plate.
- Unfold or unroll pastry and ease into pie plate. pressing firmly against bottom and side and being careful not to stretch pastry, which will cause it to shrink when baked. You can also lightly poke the bottom of the pastry in the pie plate with a fork. For pie, trim overhanging edge of pastry 1 inch from rim of pie plate.
Baking the Pie Crust
- Preheat your oven to 400°F. Cut a circle of parchment paper that is large enough to fit into a 9-inch pie plate and come up the edges as well.
- Line the pie crust with the parchment circle. Gently add pie weights or dried beans into the pan, filling it ½ of the way and up the sides of the pie plate. The weights ensure that the crust holds its shape during baking and doesn't slump in the pan or bubble up.
- Chill the crust in the fridge for 10 minutes while the oven is heating up.
- Place into the preheated oven. Bake until the edges of the pie are just turning golden brown, not anymore.
- Remove the crust from the oven and remove the pie weights and the paper.
- If you'll be baking the crust once it's filled (chess pie, etc.) return the pie to the oven and bake the crust until the bottom is just beginning to color, around another 6 to 8 minutes.
- If you're making a cream pie or refrigerated pie, you must bake it until the entire crust is golden brown, about 15 minutes longer. Remove and cool completely, then use in your recipe as directed.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Timothy Jordan says
Hello from Florida, I am a senior man trying to bake pie crust for the first time and I wanted to start simple with a Betty Crocker pie mix. All I can get here is the 11oz double mix. When I read your recipe it says to use 1 cup plus TBL spoon AP flour, what happened to the BC crust mix?? Or is that what you are inferring to? Am I cutting shortening into the pie mix? Sorry I’m not understanding, please help. Thank you, Tim