The Foolproof Science Behind Flaky, Tender All-Butter Pie Crust | Techniquely with Lan Lam
Mastering pie dough has never been easier. Lan Lam breaks down the food science behind Andrea Geary’s foolproof all-butter pie crust recipe. Using visual cues and a food processor technique, Lan shows how to balance flakiness, tenderness, and structural support without guesswork. Learn how frozen grated butter creates delicate, flaky pastry layers, while a measured flour-and-butter paste guarantees melt-in-your-mouth tenderness. Lan walks you through rolling, transferring, and crimping pie crust like a pro—demonstrating with both a blind-baked single crust for chocolate cream pie and a double-crust apple pie.
00:00 Intro: Perfect Pie Crust
00:38 The Anatomy of a Perfect Pie Crust
01:30 How to Develop a Flaky and Tender Pie Crust
07:28 How to Roll Out Pie Dough Evenly
9:20 Transferring, Trimming, and Crimping a Single Pie Crust
12:08 Pie Blind Baking Basics
12:30 Assembling and Double-Crust Crimping for Apple Pie
16:13 Blind-Baked Chocolate Cream Pie & Taste Test
Foolproof All-Butter Dough for Double-Crust Pie Recipe:
Foolproof All-Butter Dough for Single-Crust Pie Recipe:
Classic Apple Pie Recipe:
Chocolate Cream Pie Recipe:
Double-Crust Apple Pie Recipe:
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I would love instead of using mixers or machines, you could provide hands on methods. I miss my mom's and Aunt's style. Just saying.
That blue dough really should have been baked. It would have been so interesting to see how it turned out. Honestly, it might have been kind of wierd but cool, but a blueberry pie with that dough would have been neat.
I’ve tried this method/recipe several times. It definitely makes a flaky crust, but the amount of butter is so high that it oozes out and burns on my oven bottom.
Please tell me that an actual pie was indeed made with that blue crust. A nice blueberry filling would have been awesome in it.🫐🥧
I use this dough recipe a lot. No matter what I do on a single crust—it shrinks horribly. For a double crust pie the recipe its great but on a single crust that is blind baked its always a disaster for me.
can this same technique be used for better biscuits?
Really wanted to see Lan frisbee toss that pie dough – Or make a blue pie. Struck out on both!
Since she doesn't give the amounts (like they usually do), here they are: 10 tablespoons of butter, 2 of which are grated and frozen, the remaining cut in 1/2 inch cubes, 1 and 1/4 cups AP flour, 3/4 cup of which is mixed with 1 tablespoon of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of salt in the food processor. When that part of recipe is finished, add the remaining 1/2 cup of flour. Next, mix in the grated butter. Finally, mix in 1/4 ice water. Use these amounts and follow along with the directions.
Double these amounts (obviously) for 2 pie crusts or a double-crust pie.
Wow, all these steps, with explanations why, are soooooo helpful!! Thank you, Lan! Yum, yum, yum!! ❤❤❤
Me too Me too! I could just eat pie crust 🤣😂😅😆🌷
354 grams of flour is 141 grams per cup. Is that correct?
Lan is the best!
Does anyone precook the apples at all before baking?
Love the way Lan explains things, but she left out telling us alternatives to using the machine. I think there have been some influencers who specifically make pie dough without the processor, so I will have to look that up. In between places and my machine is in storage.
"I could eat just pie crust and be perfectly happy"
I heartily agree!😋
How much flour?
Such great techniques. Can't want to try. I don't have a food processor, but I've had good success freezing 3/5 of the the flour, creaming the butter when it's slightly soft at room temp, and then cutting in the cold flour to make my paste. It can be very sticky, so I use a rubber spatula to turn it out onto plastic wrap and use the platic to shape it into one or two logs that I freeze along with the remaining flour. I then grate the frozen paste, toss it with the rest of the cold flour and sprinkle in water as per usual until it holds together. I based this on ATK's earlier video on the flour paste method, but somewhere along the way I lost the part about reserving some butter for the final blend, so looking forward to trying that too.
Lan separating the jobs of the butter paste and the frozen shreds makes this technique much easier to understand. Tenderness and flaky layers need different structures, and explaining those roles gives home cooks something useful to look for beyond simply following a recipe.
Great visual explanation Lan!!!! You are so good at this.
What really angers me about this video is that we are not given the recipes!
I like the use of the blue dye in this teaching. Smart.
I use my handt-dandy pastry cutter, not a food processor. Lan was using one at the beginning, and I was encouraged. You know when to stop when you do it be hand. With a food processor you can easily go too far. I don't have one, anyway.
I’m so intrigued by this different technique of a flour+butter paste followed by the rest of the flour and shreds of frozen butter! I will give this a try some time. I usually make mine in the food processor with all butter plus an egg yolk and some sour cream. It saves me the water hassle and comes together smoothly. It’s quite a forgiving dough with a little extra richness.
shouldn't you call this "marry me pie(s)"…. absolutely great…thank you for this!
The way Lan firmly conveys her expertise without any condescension is so refreshing and increasingly rare. Just an excellent teacher. Thanks, as always!
❤😊
The utility knife
Foolproof? You, obviously, haven’t met me. Lol.
First