Apparently pie crust is something that has garnered a reputation as being a challenge that only the more experiences and confident chefs take on. The reality is that this is an incredibly simple thing to make, and since it's Thanksgiving, I'm going to share with you my mother's original recipe for an easy pie crust.
All you need:
Two cups of flour, two sticks of butter, three tablespoons of water, and a food processor.
Start my measuring the flour, but be sure not to pack it tightly into the measuring cup. Instead, take a spoon and really loosen the flour in the bag by giving it a few fluffs before scooping it into a measuring cup, a spoonful at a time. You can tap the measuring cup on the side to level the flour a bit for the sake of measuring, but let it remain as light and airy as possible, don't press it down or pack it in at all.
Dump the flour into a food processor. Then grab the butter out of the fridge (it should be chilled, don't leave it out on the counter to soften or anything beforehand). Like you're slicing a banana for a smoothie, just cut it up so that the pieces going into the food processor are about 1/2-inch thick slices.
Pulse it in the food processor. Don't let it run long at all, just turn it on in quick bursts before letting the mixture re-settle. As it starts to stick and build up around the walls of the food processor, you can give the machine a shake to loosen the batter up. After a minute or two, once the mixture sticking to the food processor walls is getting pretty high, stop and add three tablespoons of VERY COLD (like, water that was sitting in ice) water. Then go back to pulsing, and in seconds you'll see the mixture starting to roll together into a big dough ball.
Take out the dough, trying not to handle it too much, and put it on a lightly-floured surface. Roll it in the flour, then use a rolling pin to flatten it out until you've got a sheet of dough that's wide enough to cover your pie dish. Carefully lay this inside the pie dish (you might want to fold it in half first in order to transfer it to the pie dish without it tearing), easing it into the space so that it's lining the dish. You can trim around the edge if you have a lot of overhang, and then just fold over (outward) and tuck in the edges of the dough sheet to make a fun, pretty rim along the edge of the pie dish.
Hey, look, you're done! Was that easy or what? Now just fill it with whatever... pumpkin pie filling? Blueberry? Apple?? Mmmmmm.... happy Thanksgiving!
