Laminated Pie Dough

Laminated Pie Dough

Wonderful pie crust requires only a couple of ingredients and tricks to ensure it’s extra flaky and tender. This dough is hydrated with ice water and apple cider vinegar, which helps prevent a tough, chewy crust. Quartering the dough and stacking it before rolling yields many flaky layers, giving you a shortcut version of laminated pastry. This recipe makes enough dough for two crusts: freeze the extra round of dough, if you’re not using it, for up to 4 months. When you’re ready to use it, thaw it, wrapped, overnight in the refrigerator. 

Yield: 2 rounds of dough for 9-inch crusts

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

⅔ cup/115 grams ice water

3 cups/385 grams all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons/28 grams sugar

2 teaspoons kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal) or 1 teaspoon fine salt

1 ¼ cups/285 grams cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes

In a liquid measuring cup, add the vinegar to the ice water. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar and salt. Add the butter and gently flatten some of the larger pieces with your hands as you massage them into the flour. You want some pieces about the size of a marble, and some small and flat. Larger pieces create flakes in the crust while smaller pieces make it tender.

Make a well in the center of the mixture and pour in about ½ cup of the icy vinegar water. Using a fork, gently work the flour into the water until it is mostly hydrated, adding more liquid if needed. Turn the dough out onto a clean surface and gently knead it together a few times until the unincorporated bits of flour begin to disappear. Some floury bits are OK.

Press the dough into a square, about 1 ½ inches thick, and cut into quarters. Stack 2 of the quarters on top of one another (place the others to the side) and gently press into another square about 1 ½ inches thick. Slice that into quarters again, and stack those 4 quarters on top of one another. Form that stack into a round and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Use a rolling pin to gently roll over the covered dough round to flatten it out into a round about 1 ½ inches thick. Repeat this process with the remaining two quarters. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 2 days until ready to use.