Pot Pie Crust

There's fun and then there's pot pie fun. They are about the same thing but one involves a pot pie and how could you not want that?

This is a pretty standard butter pastry crust w/ no sugar and works great for pot pies and the like (hence the name). It is a simple recipe and pretty hard to screw up. All you need is:

2 sticks butter, cold
2 1/2 cup flower
1 tsp salt
ice water

This makes enough for a pot pie in a fourteen inch round pan.

So I said this was hard to screw up but if you are going to screw up one part it's this. You need to add the flower and salt to a bowl and mix thoroughly. Then add the two sticks of cold butter. W/  a pastry blender or a fork, you need to combine this stuff. Here is where you need to be careful. If you want a nice, flaky texture, you cannot mix it too much. You want to have big visible chunks of butter left. If it is a throughly mixed paste, you have gone to far and your crust will turn out a bit dense but still good.

 

Right like that is about how you want it. Don't worry if there a couple big chunks, they will get broken up as you work w/ it later. Once you got it here, you need to add about a half cup of ice water until you can get it all to stick together (not the cubes, just the water). Again, don't overwork it. Form the ball into two roughly equal sized chunks:

You need to cover these and place them in the fridge for an hour or two. From here you need to roll it out. If one of the balls is bigger, start w/ that as this will be the bottom crust. Use a rolling pin or a big beer bottle:

This will need to be about sixteen or seventeen inches across. Measure w/ your pan and it needs to be a bit larger so it can cover the sides. Then you are just gonna wanna place it in a lightly greased pan:

This is a pot pie, it's supposed to be a bit rustic so don't go worrying it's all completely geometrically perfect. As you can see, I had to patch it up a bit w/ extra dough, that is no big deal either. After this, roll out the other chunk to a slightly smaller diameter. Add your pie filling and then place the other crust on top forming a seal around the edges as best you can. Then put a few slits in the top to let steam out.

From here, I place in an oven at about 400 F for twenty minutes until the crust is nice and brown. If you have a favorite pot pie filling, let us know in the comments. Here at TFK, we are constantly looking for new things to stuff in crusts.