Artificial Food Coloring Free All-Butter Pie Crust
A truly great pie starts with the crust, and this all-butter version delivers that perfectly flaky, golden, rich pastry that store-bought shortcuts simply can't match. The ingredient list is refreshingly short — just flour, salt, sugar, butter, and ice water — so there's nothing hidden, nothing synthetic, and no reason to squint at a label wondering what that last ingredient actually is. Many pre-made crusts and pie dough products rely on artificial dyes or color-treated shortenings to achieve that uniform golden appearance, but here the beautiful color comes entirely from real butter doing what it does best in a hot oven. The technique of keeping the butter cold and working it in until you see those pea-sized pieces is the secret to layers that shatter and melt at the same time. A short rest in the refrigerator relaxes the dough and makes it far easier to roll out cleanly into that satisfying 12-inch circle. Whether you're filling it with fruit, custard, or something savory, this crust is the kind of foundation that makes the whole pie feel genuinely homemade from edge to edge.
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Learn more →Ingredients
8 servings
- 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp granulated sugar
- ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes and chilled
- 3–4 tbsp ice water
Instructions
- 1
Whisk together the flour, salt, and sugar in a large mixing bowl until combined.
- 2
Add the chilled butter cubes to the flour mixture and work them in with a pastry cutter or your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs with some pea-sized butter pieces still visible throughout.
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