Cora’s Pie Crust

I need to start with with a caveat: I am by no means a pie crust expert. Usually if I’m making a pie, I just get a pre-made crust from the store (I know, the horror).

So I can’t say for sure what makes a great pie crust vs. a mediocre one.

But if this recipe is indeed my great-grandmother Cora’s as we suspect it is, I’m inclined to trust it. She made more pies than I think most of us will ever make in our lifetime without being a professional of some kind.

We found a written record from a family friend that knew them near the turn of the century who noted that there were always pies on the table. She had hungry farm hands to feed, and pies were a great way to pack in some calories real quick! Apparently one year she decided to keep track just for fun, and she counted 1,200 pies made in a single year. And here I thought I baked a lot.

Initial thoughts on the recipe

Thankfully, there’s really not too much to unpack here. It’s a straightforward recipe, the meaning of which hasn’t really been obscured by time as much as some of the others can be. While I don’t have much experience with making pie crusts from scratch, there isn’t anything that’s particularly intimidating in this recipe.

Trying it out

Ok, there’s only one bit of the recipe that caused some hesitation: “1/2 cup of butter and lard or drippings mixed.” I’m guessing drippings would be the grease left over from cooking meat. And I can tell you right now, unless I’m making a meat pie I don’t exactly want essence of bacon in my pie crust. Maybe I’m totally wrong on this– if you use drippings in your pie crust and swear by it, let me know.

Either way, I didn’t have drippings OR lard on hand, just butter. So this was just gonna be an all-butter pie crust. My brief internet research told me that the fats in pie crust contribute to the texture in different ways. If you try this one yourself, here’s some things to know about how the fat you choose affects your pie crust (for a more detailed dive, check out this post on pie fats at Food 52):

• Lard: makes a flaky pie crust and is more flavorful than shortening
• Shortening: one of the best choices for flaky texture because of its high melting point, but not particularly flavorful
• Butter: have to be careful when handling in order to get flaky layers, but adds lots of flavor and browns better than other pie fats
• Oil: because it’s liquid, oil won’t give a flaky crust, but is good for denser crusts that won’t get soggy used in custard pies
• Mix and Match: many a baker’s preferred method, and evidently Cora’s too, this allows you to pick and choose ingredients for flavor and texture

I wasn’t sure exactly what Cora meant by “rub into flour;” since you don’t really want to melt the butter here, I went with the tried-and-true method of cutting in cold butter with a pastry blender.

The recipe was rather vague about the amount of water that goes into it. As little as possible is great and all, but then I started getting anxiety about exactly how much I had to put in to wet the dough. Like, is this too much? Overall, I think I put in somewhere between 1/4 – 1/2 cup of cold water. I wanted the elements to adhere to one another, but just barely.

I also tried out a fun new way to roll out the crust. Because these are #quarantinetimes and flour is apparently a scarce resource out in the grocery stores, I didn’t want to use any more than necessary. So instead, I rolled out the dough between two pieces of parchment paper. This also was handy for transporting the crust to the pie plate.

The verdict:

This one’s a keeper! It produced a buttery, golden pie crust. It held it’s structure really well, and I could actually see the flaky layers of the crust after it baked.

Again, I’m no pie crust expert, but to my novice tastes I would consider this a 5/5.

I will add the caveat that, due to availability of supplies, I didn’t make this exactly as the recipe stated, but I think the result was still in keeping with the general goal.