Last week I was craving peach pie. I had some beautiful Zaycon peaches to use so I pulled out my recipes. I get around to making a pie about once a year, so when I pulled my Crisco out of the pantry it was RANCID. Yuck. I guess I have no other uses for Crisco. What do you use it for? I had already prepared my peaches and my craving was not going away so I decided to try making a crust with butter. Well, it turned out fabulous!

Pie Crust Recipe

2 ½ Cup Flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup of chilled diced butter

½ cup water

This makes a double pie crust.

In a large bowl combine flour and salt. Cut in butter until you get course crumbs. I like to use a pastry blender. You can also use two forks, but it is much easier with the pastry blender. Once you have a crumb like mixture mix in cold water 1 Tablespoon at a time, until it forms a ball. Do not allow the crust to get too wet. You may not use all of the water. It is recommended to refrigerate dough for 4 hours covered. I only did about 20 minutes because I did not want to wait until 1 am to eat my pie. My crust turned out fine, but possibly could have had an even more improved texture with refrigeration.

 When it comes time to roll out the pie crust this is my favorite method by far. I have tried using a pastry cloth and it worked well, but not as well as my Silpat.

Transfer is easy with the Silpat too. Simply turn the Silpat upside down and peel away. For perfect crust.

The other tool that I love when I bake is my french pastry pin, it is so nice to roll with. You can see it pictured next to my pie in the photo below.

Pie Filling

6 pitted and sliced peaches

1/3 cup flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1/4 cup butter

1 t cinnamon

1/4 t nutmeg

Slice peaches set aside. Mix flour, sugar and butter to crumb stage. I used my pastry blender, but you could use two forks. Layer peaches in crust then sprinkle butter mixture and continue layering until you use all for the crumbs and peaches.

So my tip for cutting the pie crust into the lattice strips is to use a dough or pastry scraper. This tool is also really fab when rolling pizza or bread dough. It makes it easier to handle and easier to clean up!

Bake your pie for 45 minutes at 350° until crust is golden. Sometimes peach pie can turn out  runny. Especially if your peaches are really juicy. So to avoid a really runny pie you can either add a tablespoon of corn starch to your filling topping mixture or when the pie is done turn off the oven and leave your pie inside to cool down.  I was out of cornstarch so I tried the oven trick for this pie.