Blue Ribbon Group Classic Butter-Lard Pie Crust
Prize Winning Pie Crust Recipe
This Classic Butter-Lard Pie Crust recipe makes the best, most flaky, and most delicious homemade crust ever! You’ll actually get two pie crusts from this recipe. Use them for cream pies, double crust fruit pies, or any pie for that matter. This recipe from a best pie winner at the 2015 Iowa State Fair, check it out here.
The two most important tips with homemade pie crusts: using cold ingredients (especially the water and whatever fats you’re using) and not overmixing the dough. Ask any blue ribbon winning pie bakers their secrets to winning and many will note those two things. They also say, practice makes perfect. The more pies you make, the more quickly you will get the feel of it, a perfect, prize-winning pie crust.
Classic Butter/Lard Pie Crust
Makes two 10-inch crusts
12 tablespoons very cold unsalted butter
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon table salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1/3 cup very cold lard
6 to 8 tablespoons ice water, divided
Combine flour, salt, and sugar. Using a food processor on pulse setting, cut the butter and lard into the flour mixture until the size of peas. While continuing to pulse, slowly add 6 tablespoons ice water. Keep pulsing until the dough begins to form a ball, adding 1 teaspoon more water at a time if needed to form a soft dough. Transfer dough to a floured worksurface. It should form together, but not be sticky. Fold it onto itself, just until incorporated, then roll/into a ball. Split the ball in half, shape each half into a disk, and then wrap each half in plastic. Refrigerate until needed.
