Makes one 9-inch pie.
Ingredients
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup shortening
1/3 to 1/2cup very cold water
Directions
Blend flour, salt and shortening together with pastry cutter or by hand, rubbing between your palms until the mixture is crumbly. Add ice water and mix together gently. Some flours are drier than others and more water will be needed. Add 1 tablespoon at a time until your mixture sticks together. This step should be done with as little effort as possible; the less you handle the mixture the more flaky it is going to be.
Lightly dust table and roll out dough to 1/4-inch thickness — the less you roll the better. Place in pie plate and poke the dough with a fork to prevent too many air bubbles from forming in the crust when you bake it.
For a prebake, bake at 405 degrees for 5 minutes, then quickly check for swollen bubbles, pierce them with a fork. Return to the oven and bake 10 minutes more until golden. Some ovens don’t do “golden,” so don’t overbake the crust as it will just continue to shrink and you will end up with an 8-inch crust in a 9-inch pan.
