My Aunt's tip about using cold butter in pie crust flopped hard

My aunt swore up and down that using butter straight from the fridge was the secret to flaky pie crust. I tried it for a Thanksgiving pie last month and ended up with these weird hard lumps of butter that never mixed in right. The crust baked up tough and greasy in spots instead of flaky. Has anyone else gotten bad advice from a family member that totally backfired?

2 comments

2 Comments

ross.william3d ago

I had the exact same problem with my grandmother's "secret" pie crust recipe - she told me to use frozen butter and grate it. Spent a whole afternoon grating rock-hard butter, and it just melted into a mess before I could even get the flour mixed in. What finally worked for me was cutting the butter into quarter-inch cubes, then popping them back in the fridge for 15 minutes before mixing. Have you tried chilling your flour and bowl too? That made a bigger difference than I expected.

kevin_roberts413d ago

Guess I'll just keep buying frozen pie crusts and pretend I made them from scratch.