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Plain Pastry
1 1/4 cups pastry flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/3 to 1/2 cup butter 1/4 cup ice water Mix in the order given.
All the materials must be as cool as possible. Sift the salt into the flour. Rub in the butter with a knife, spoon or the tips of the fingers. Add the ice water a little at a time, making soft tiny masses. Then press these little masses together. Toss upon a floured board, and roll out with as little manipulation as possible. It should be rolled in one direction only, not back and forth, and on one side only.
If two crusts are used, the lower one should be moistened around the edge with cold water, then a half-inch strip of pastry should be placed around the edge of the under crust. This strip should also be moistened, and the upper crust placed over the pie and pressed slightly around the edge.
A short-flake butter crust with a fat ratio at the rich end of the range. The instructions are unusually precise about handling, and that precision is the whole recipe.
- YieldThis makes enough for one 8- or 9-inch single crust, or a thin double crust for a small pie. For a standard 9-inch double-crust fruit pie, make one and a half to two times the quantity.
- Pastry flourPastry flour runs about 8-9 percent protein, softer than modern all-purpose. Substitute all-purpose but reduce it slightly, or use two parts all-purpose to one part cake flour; bread flour will give a noticeably tougher crust.
- The butter measureOne-third to one-half cup is 5 1/3 to 8 tablespoons for 1 1/4 cups flour. The high end gives a very rich, fragile crust that is harder to lift; start near 6 tablespoons unless you are confident handling short dough.
- "As cool as possible" is the hingeThe flakes come from solid butter shards steaming apart in the oven. Cube the butter and chill it, chill the flour if the kitchen is warm, and stop working the moment the mixture holds. Working the butter until it warms is a common cause of a mealy crust.
- Rolling in one directionThis is not fussiness. Rolling back and forth works the dough in both directions, which bakers generally blame for a crust that shrinks down the sides of the pan as it bakes. Roll from the centre outward, turn the dough a quarter, roll again.
- Rest before rollingThe original goes straight from pressing to rolling. Thirty minutes wrapped in the refrigerator relaxes the dough and firms the butter, and makes the "as little manipulation as possible" instruction much easier to obey.
- The edge stripThe half-inch band laid around the moistened bottom crust is an old seal: it doubles the rim so the top crust has something to grip and juices are less likely to boil out. A modern fold-and-crimp does the same job.
- BakingNo temperature is given. Pastry of this kind wants a hot start: 425-450F for the first 15 minutes to set the flakes, then down to 350-375F to finish the filling. Blind-bake a single shell at 425F with weights.
Butter pastry with this ratio and this insistence on cold hands is often associated with the era when American cookery schools were codifying technique into rules a student could be graded on. Without suet, lard or drippings, a vegetarian or Lenten kitchen needed a crust made from butter alone.