This tender flaky lard pie crust recipe is straight from my great grandma’s recipe box. It practically melts in your mouth.
If the perfect pie crust is on your baking bucket list, you have to give this recipe a try. After a long search, we finally have my great grandma’s recipe for the pie crust she was so famous for.
Luckily we are all the beneficiaries of her decades of experience. Please give it a try for yourself.
Is there a certain food that instantly makes you think of your grandmother? For my mom, that food is pie.
Her dad’s mother lived in rural Indiana. So visiting was always such a treat for her and her Chicago suburbanite siblings.
My mom has tried so many pie crusts over the years trying to find one that rivals hers. She has stumbled upon some good ones like her flaky pie crust and even a chocolate pie crust.
Even though they were absolutely great, they just weren’t grandma’s pie crust. Then finally she got the recipe from her cousin.
We finally had it! So you think there would be instant pie, right?
Not quite.
Good Lard Makes All of the Difference
The key to a great pie crust is using good ingredients. There are so few things in there, the flavor of each one makes a big difference.
My mom remembers going with her grandma to the butcher to get the lard for her crust. She said “if you don’t have the right lard, it’s not worth making a pie.”
Leaf lard is the most prized lard around. It is super white and sourced from around the kidneys and loins of the pig.
So we waited until we had the good stuff. MiMi rendered leaf lard from pigs they raised on their little homestead farm.
It was finally time to make a pie. And it was worth the wait.
Of course you don’t have to render your own. Leaf lard is available, you may just need to put in a little effort to find it.
Good has a clean flavor and makes the flakiest pastry. It is worth going out of your way to find the good stuff.
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Lard, Really?
Yes! Lard actually has a lot of advantages over other fats you could use in your pastry.
Lard blends easily, chills nicely and has such a silky feel in your hands as you work with the dough. It creates such perfect flakes in the crust.
It is easier to work with cold than butter and doesn’t melt as quickly. Plus it has less saturated fat and no trans fats unlike shortening.
Tips for a Flaky Crust
Getting a flaky crust depends on more than just using lard. Of course there are more tricks you can have in your arsenal.
The first is the temperature of your ingredients. Using cold lard and water will help keep the fat from melting before you are ready.
Chilling the dough before you roll it and again before you bake it also helps. I like to pat it into disks before I chill it.
That makes it chill more evenly and you have a head start on rolling it out vs. chilling it as a ball. Of course working it as little as possible will help as well.
No Soggy Bottoms
The notes on my great grandma’s recipe say to preheat a cookie sheet with the oven. Put the pie pan on the hot sheet pan.
The pan will not only catch any drips, but will also apply even heat across the bottom of the pie. It will help prevent that dreaded soggy bottom.
It’s Pie Time!
I used this crust to make my great-grandma’s apple pie. That recipe is coming in a couple of days.
It is the gold standard of pie’s in my mom’s eyes. She drove across town in snow and subzero temperatures to have a slice. Of course now we love it too.
This pie would also make a great pot pie. Whip some up to make an extra tasty creamy chicken pot pie or ham and cheese pot pie.
I can imagine great-grandma loving a good old fashioned sour cream and raisin pie. Or whip up a fun oatmeal pie for another fun treat.
Don’t forget to save those scraps and turn them into cinnamon sugar pie crust cookies! That is a great reward for making your own crust.
What is the secret to a good pie crust?
There are two secrets that make a super tender crust:
The first is keeping it nice and cold. Start with cold water and lard and refrigerate the crust again before you bake it.
The second is to work the dough as little as possible. Working the dough too much develops the gluten and makes for a tougher crust.
Lard Pie Crust
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1½ cups all purpose flour
- 1 pinch salt
- ½ cup lard leaf lard if possible
- 3 to 4 Tablespoons cold water
Instructions
Making the Dough
- Stir together 1½ cups all purpose flour and 1 pinch salt.
- Cut in ½ cup lard until you have a crumbly mixture.
- Add just enough ice cold water to make it come together into a dough.
- Pat into a flat disk and wrap with plastic wrap. Chill at least a half hour.
- Roll into a thin circle and fit into your pie pan.
- For the flakiest crust, put the crust lined pie plate back in the refrigerator for another 15 minutes. Or go ahead and proceed to bake according to your pie filling's instructions.
Blind Baking the Crust
- To bake the pie shell without fillings, preheat oven to 425°F.
- Prick the crust a few times with a fork, then line with parchment paper or foil and fill with pie weights or dried beans. Bake 12 minutes.
- Carefully remove paper or foil and weights then ake 8 to 10 minutes more for a partially baked crust, or for a fully baked crust 10 to 12 minutes longer until golden brown.
Notes
- This is enough for a single pie crust. Double the recipe for a double crust pie.
- You can make pie crust dough ahead of time if you want. Store the disk of wrapped dough in the refrigerator for up to three days or freeze it up to three months. Defrost frozen dough in the refrigerator overnight before using.
- Using a good quality rendered lard will make for the best pie crust. If it's not by the shortening or butter, you may ask at the meat counter or at a local butcher shop.
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I have to try this. I have been watching American Patriot on Youtube and Justine was making a delicious potato pie, so I am looking for a delicious crust to use – and I think this may be it. Now, she was baking it in a pot with coals on top for about an hour and a half…translating to about 350 for 1.5 hours. I can’t wait to try this out, as I’ve completely switched to Lard.
That sounds really interesting. I love trying unique and antique recipes. I hope you enjoy it!
than you
can you use a electric mixer to make the pie crust?
You certainly can. Just don’t overmix it once you add the water, you don’t want to develop the glutens. Mix the lard in until it’s pretty uniformly crumbly then add just enough water to bring it together and you should be good.
This recipe did not work at all for me . Nothing about it worked . I made dough for a 1 crust pie put it in plastic wrap refrigerated it and then I made a crust for a 2 crust pie plastic wrap and refrigerated it . I took great care to follow the recipe as given .
Fast forward 4 hours preheat oven get one crust pie out of refrigerator roll it out get it in pie plate (I admit to not being good at pie crust which is why I keep trying ) put in oven bake with pie weights . bring out after 15 minutes remove pie weights with parchment paper along with most of the bottom of pie.
never fear I have the double crust I can use. try a second time FAIL!! Very annoyed, if this was a joke on beginning bakers You Got Me
I am really sorry that happened to you. Pie crust can feel tricky, for sure. I have never had that happen, so I am not quite sure what could have happened. I wish I could help you troubleshoot.
So I did a little research. It seems that pie crust sticking to the parchment like that could be a couple of things. One could be that it was undercooked. A little more time in the oven may have helped. The second is perhaps the dough was a bit too wet. You want to add just enough water to bring the dough together, but not enough to make it sticky. I hope you have better luck next time!
Made this to go on chicken pot pie. My family enjoyed it. It was tender and flaky.
Why not include the metric volumes in parentheses? I do everything in my kitchen metric, for precision and consistency. Surely I’m not the only one that has to think, “Lessee, cup and a half of flour is, um, 120 grams, half of that is 60, so 120 plus 60 is, um, 180. That’s it. 180 grams of flour.” Arithmetic doesn’t come easily to me. Just so nobody else will have to look it up, a half cup of lard is about 103 grams. I think…
My entire family raved about the piecrust and that is a real first! Easy to make and chilling it in a disk really helped roll the crust.
Why do you people always fail to put the oven temperature in your recipes?
The lack of temperature is because there are so many different ways to proceed with pie pastry. Some recipes require the crust to be raw when it is filled. Some use a partially baked crust and others require a fully baked crust. The pastry baking instructions will depend on what your are doing with it and those instructions are usually found with the pie recipe. However, to blind bake you would bake this crust at 425F for about 10-12 minutes.
Great recipe and freezes well for 6 months in plastic wrap and a freezer bag. Used leaf lard, somewhat costly but worth it if you are going to go through the trouble of making homemade pie!
For sure and great tip on freezing it!
Used it for my homemade Dutch apple pie. It was great! It almost had a shortbread quality to it, which was great. I used Armour Lard Definitely added to the pie I always make for my family.
That makes me so happy! I am glad you liked it.