. What you end up with is a very consistent ratio of flour/fat paste and dry flour, which means that you can then add the same amount of water, crust after crust. It's a much more consistent way to make pie crust.Adding extra liquid to your pie dough can help it bind together better, making it less prone to cracking and softer when rolling. However, adding too much water can lead to too much gluten formation, which in turn leads to a leathery or tough crust.
recipe calls for all butter for precisely this reason. All the flavor, none of the difficulty. How's that for win-win?Gluten formation is inhibited in acidic environments, thus adding vinegar or lemon juice to a pie crust will keep it more tender.in mildly acidic environments—down to a pH of around 6 or so. Adding a small amount of acid to a pie crust will make it tougher, not more tender.
Some folks recommend using your hands so that you get a feel for what a good pie dough should be like. Others recommend a as it very rapidly cuts fat into flour and incorporates water, which means less melted fat and a crisper crust.While a food processor is great for cutting butter into your flour, the best tool for actually forming dough once water has been added is a bowl and a rubber spatula. See, a rubber spatula, with its wide, flat face will start forming flaky layers even before you get to the step of rolling the dough out. This makes for a noticeably flakier crust when finished.
. But to be completely honest, it's one that I don't really use at home that often. With the fat/flour all-butter technique, it's really not necessary—the dough is easy to roll out as-is—and in fact, I've even heard some folks complain that the additional liquid that vodka allows you to add makes for a dough that'sThere's also the fact that the recipe violates Rule #1 of my home: don't waste alcohol.