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Flaky Pie Crust
1¾ cups flour 8 tablespoons Mazola Cold water to moistenabout 4 tablespoons 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch Sift the flour, cornstarch and salt into a bowl. Stir in the Mazola, moisten with the water. Turn onto a floured board, roll out at once.
One-quarter teaspoon baking powder may be added if desired.
An oil pastry from a corn-products promotional booklet, built on liquid fat rather than solid shortening. It behaves differently from a butter crust at every stage, and the differences all point the same way: work it as little as possible.
- Roll it immediatelyThe instruction to roll out at once is the hinge of the recipe. Oil coats flour proteins on contact and the dough only stiffens and turns crumbly if it sits, so there is no resting or chilling step and none should be added.
- Mazola is corn oilAny neutral vegetable oil works. Eight tablespoons is half a cup, and the volume matters more than the brand.
- What the cornstarch doesArgo and Kingsford's are both plain cornstarch. A quarter cup replacing part of the flour cuts the gluten and gives tenderness in place of the flakiness that cold solid fat would provide; despite the title, expect a short, sandy crust rather than visible layers.
- Water by feelAbout four tablespoons is a starting point, not a rule. Add it a tablespoon at a time until the dough just coheres, since oil doughs go greasy and slack very quickly if overwet.
- Handling on the boardThis dough tears rather than stretches. Rolling between two sheets of waxed paper or parchment is far easier than a floured board, and torn patches can simply be pressed back together in the pan without harming the texture.
- YieldTwo cups of dry ingredients with half a cup of oil. The original gives no yield, but this is about the usual quantity for a double crust for one 9-inch pie, or two single shells.
- BakingThe original gives no temperature. For a blind-baked shell, prick the base well and bake at 425F for 12 to 15 minutes until lightly coloured; filled pies follow the filling's directions.
- The optional baking powderA quarter teaspoon puffs the crust very slightly and softens it further. Leave it out if you want the crispest result.
This is a house recipe from a corn-refining company's promotional cookbook, and it reads like one: every branded product in the pantry line appears in a single short formula, with Mazola oil doing the work of lard or butter and Argo cornstarch standing in for part of the flour. Mazola corn oil and the Argo and Kingsford's starch brands were all held by the Corn Products Refining Company, formed in 1906, and booklets of this kind were given away by the thousand to teach cooks uses for a cooking oil that was then still unfamiliar in American kitchens accustomed to solid fats. The oil crust it teaches has outlived the marketing: it is fast, requires no pastry cutter, no chilling and no cold hands, and versions of it circulated for decades afterward in newspaper columns and community cookbooks, often recommended to beginners for exactly those reasons.