This tender and flaky American Pie Pastry is an easy twist on a classic rough puff. Made easily by hand and packed full of butter with no shortening, the chilling time is easily sped up in the freezer – no stress. The only question is: what kind of pie are you going to make first?!
500gPlain Flour (All Purpose) - plus extra for dusting
2tbspSugar - optional for sweet pies
150mlWater - ice cold
Instructions
Weigh out 200g Salted Butter and cut into 1cm (½”) cubes. Place into the freezer to get extra cold.
Measure out 500g Plain Flour into a large mixing bowl. Add 2 tbsp Sugar if you are making dough for a sweet pie. Add 140g Salted Butter cut into slightly smaller cubes.
Use the tips of your fingers to rub the flour into the butter until it resembles breadcrumbs. Just like you would when making scones.
Now add the extra cold butter cubes from the freezer.
Very briefly use your hands again to start to rub the second batch of butter into the flour. But really you only want to squidge the cubes a little and toss them in the flour. You want lots of big chunks of butter to remain – they just need to be coated in the flour.
Add ⅔ of 150ml Ice Cold Water and use your hands, a dough whisk or a spatula to start mixing the water in. Be gentle and try not to work the dough too much.
Add more of the water until you can squeeze a handful of the mix into a dough.
Use both hands to squeeze all the mix to form a ball of dough. Wrap the dough ball in clingfilm and put it in the fridge for an hour or the freezer for 20 minutes.
Roll out the dough into a rough thick rectangle. Keep turning and flipping the dough, adding more flour if needed. The dough will be difficult to roll at first. Just keep persevering and don’t push down too hard with he rolling pin.
Use a knife to cut the dough into quarters.
Stack the 4 quarters of dough one on top of each other.
Roll the dough back out into a rectangle. Then repeat the cutting, stacking and rolling once more. If the dough still feels good and cold, you can do this a third time. If it is getting warm, you can either rechill and do another fold or leave it here.
If you have made the full batch, cut the dough into two pieces and wrap each into clingfilm. If you have halved the recipe, just wrap the whole dough ball. Put in the fridge for a minimum of an hour before using the pastry (or in the freezer for 20 minutes but no more).