But as Kenji López-Alt writes on Serious Eats, it's actually easy to inadvertently overwork shortening, and end up with a crumbly crust, precisely because shortening remains soft at so many temperatures. Why shortening? As Erin explains in her pie fats briefing, shortening has a high melting point, which means it's not going to turn to liquid as you work it into the flour-and this should translate into reliably flaky layers. What makes it different: A quarter-cup of vegetable shortening is mixed into the flour before you work in the butter using your fingers, a pastry cutter, or a stand mixer.The recipe: King Arthur Flour's Classic Double Pie Crust.

(Egg washed on the left, and plain on the right.) I'd be curious to try an all-butter dough that doesn't rely on the food processor, though in the past, I've found these the most difficult to get right.

The verdict: The flavor was good, though the dough fell a bit flat in comparison to the others-perhaps this was because the butter was pulverized by the machine rather than left in larger chunks.

Still, I ended up preferring the butter-vinegar dough and the sour cream dough, each of which had a nuance of tang that cut a bit of the richness and was even flakier than the all-butter crust.

Texture and taste: If you use good-tasting butter, you're going to have a good-tasting all-butter pie crust-there are no additional ingredients to mute or overshadow its flavor.

The chilled dough was a bit firmer than some of the other batches pre-roll out but ultimately gave me no trouble at all.

How easy was it to make and work with?: The dough came together quickly and without issue since the process happens within a matter of minutes in the food processor, it's easy to keep the temperature of the ingredients cool and to shuttle the finished dough to the refrigerator before the butter has a chance to misbehave.

Would this counteract flakiness? Many pie bakers say you want to see flour-coated butter pockets when you roll out the dough. Since you use the food processor first to break the butter into lima bean-size pieces and then to incorporate the flour, the butter is ultimately chopped into very small pieces. The distinction comes in the technique, as this dough is made entirely in a food processor.

What makes it different: There are no 'magic' add-ins in this recipe-you need only flour, salt, butter, and ice water.

The recipe: Melissa Clark's All-Butter Pie Crust.

These all-butter discs rose so much higher than the shortening pucks. Then, we tasted.ĭisclaimer: For my test, I baked the pie crusts as freestanding rounds, but obviously this doesn't take into account how they would have interacted with various fillings-juicy fruits, creamy custards-or, as our resident baking expert Erin McDowell has pointed out, that you might be looking for a mealier, more crumbly crust for a custard pie (pumpkin, lemon cream but flakier, laminated-esque quality for a juicy one. I cut 4 small rounds of each type of pie dough, brushed two of every batch with egg wash (those are bottom two rows of the baking sheet-which are across-the-board more appetizing), and baked at 425° F for about 15 minutes, until the dough circles were golden-brown and completely cooked-through. The ease of assembly and of rolling: How quickly and seamlessly did the dough come together? The flakiness and the flavor: Was this a crust I'd like to munch on sans peach or rhubarb filling?

When testing the best pie crust recipe, I wanted to determine:

Sour cream pie crust