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Flaky Pie Crust

Three cupfuls of flour, half a cupful of butter, half a cupful of lard, three-fourths of a cupful of ice water. Sift the flour into a chopping bowl, add the butter and lard and chop with a chopping knife until no pieces of the shortening larger than a pea can be seen. Then sprinkle the ice water here and there through the flour and mix with a fork into rather soft dough or paste. Pile upon a wellfloured kneading board, dust lightly with flour, press down with the rolling pin, and roll gently back and forth until the paste becomes an oblong sheet not more than half an inch in thickness. Slip a broad-bladed knife under each end of this sheet, and fold over toward the center, thus forming three layers of the paste. Lift with the knife from the board-which dust with fresh flour-lay it at right angles with the position it occupied when lifted, dust with flour, roll out and again fold over as before. Repeat the operation and the paste is ready to lay aside for future use, or to roll into form and use at once. When the ice water is added to the flour and shortening, the shortening becomes distributed through the flour in small balls, and if the mixing is done lightly, it remains as balls and is not packed together in a mass, and when the dough is drawn together and lightly pressed with the rolling pin, these balls flatten into flakes, which, by repeated foldings, are piled one upon another, and by gentle rolling thinner and more delicate. Three rollings and foldings are as much as these flakes will bear. Rolling and folding a greater number of times causes them to become broken and packed, so that the paste will not rise and puff up, as it should, in baking.