Pie Crust Help

[partysugar]

So this weekend I used the "no fail" pie crust recipe that is in the July Bon Appetit and totally and completely failed. I've made tons of pies in the past and never had the dough turn out so crappy as it did with this recipe. Usually I use a classic pate brisee with only butter and the new recipe called for shorting. When I rolled the dough out it was crumbly and cracky. Does anyone know what went wrong????

[threedogs]

The heat could def. ruin a pie crust - other possibility - you didn't change your brand of flour, did you? Did that just yesterday - no car, too hot to walk to a second store - so I settled on the only flour I could get - a generic bleached yuck flour. What a waste - even my son questioned what happened to my pizza dough crust. (Boy, do I need to stock up...)

[janeer]

You don't provide the recipe, but almost certainly, not enough ICE water, or perhaps not enough fat. What were the proportions of flour to fat?
www.littlecomptonmornings.blogspot.com

[recipecollector78]

I've also noticed rainy weather makes pie crust too dry. I do agree though, it does sound like it needs a little more liquid.

Pennsylvania Dutch Pastry
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup shortening (for dumplings, 1 1/4 cup for
pie pastry)
5 tablespoons cold water
1 egg
1 teaspoon vinegar

Sift flour and salt. Cut in shortening until the mixture resembles coarse corm meal. Beat water, eggs and vinegar together. Then stir into flour mixture. Sape into a ball till ready to use.

This is my fav. recipe, and the only time I've had trouble with it was in rainy wether. [which in Texas has been all the time this year.]

[revsharkie]

That's pretty much the same as my grandma's, except hers has a teaspoon and a half of salt. Her recipe says 4-5 tablespoons of water, and I usually use 4. When I made it recently it was actually too sticky.

[C. Hamster]

The shortening itself is definitely not the problem. Great piecrusts can be made from butter/shortening and from shortening alone.

"Crumbly and cracky" sounds like it was too dry and needed more water. Always err on the side of more rather than less water. The water must be ice cold and the amount in any recipe is just a suggestion -- the dough may need more or less depending on a lot of things, humidity of your kitchen and the type of flour being two.

[adventuresinbaking]

Without more info, i would say maybe not enough water? Also, did you chill the shortening before you used it?

I've made a few pies this summer and have noticed that pastry can be a bit difficult in warmer weather.

[revsharkie]

Yeah, even my grandma's "no fail" recipe was awfully temperamental when I made a pie a couple weeks ago when it was very hot and humid.