Easy Pie Crust (Tutorial!)

Some might call this pie crust cheating - and they'd probably be right. But I'm a girl with little patience and honestly, cutting butter into flour annoys me. So for this recipe I cheat.

For a two crust pie:

1 cup butter
3 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1 cup water

Don't panic now, but the first step is to soften the butter. I know, I know, every pie crust recipe says to use cold butter. And yes, your grandma would be horrified. But stay with me here, it'll all work out in the end. I just stick my stick of butter in the microwave for 10 seconds. You want it soft, but not melty or runny. (Is melty a word? My spellcheck thinks not.) You can also leave it out on your counter for a while, but I don't know how long that would take because I never remember to do that.

Put your slightly soft butter in a bowl and heap 3 cups of flour on it.

Add your salt. I don't measure, so this is me adding salt. 

Now, using a fork, push through the butter, scraping the back of the fork on the side of the bowl. The butter will squeeze through the tines of the fork. It was at about this point that I realized maybe a video would be better here, but it was a bit late for that. My apologies if my pictures and descriptions make no sense.

Keep on squishing and scraping until you get the butter pretty well worked through the flour. It won't look like the fine crumbs you're used to in pie crust making, but it's close.

Add about 1/4 cup of the water and continue your squish and scrape routine. When the water is worked through, add another 1/4 cup until you've used all the water.

You now have very wet, rather warm pie crust dough.

Heavily flour your counter and turn the dough onto it. Add flour to the top and gently knead it once or twice. It'll be sticky. Separate into halves.

Gently roll out the dough into a large circle, adding flour as needed. Using your rolling pin, gently lift onto your pie plate. The key word here is gently.

Trim the edges and you're ready to fill!

Note: For a one crust pie just halve the recipe as follows: 1/2 cup butter, 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 cup water. You probably could have figured that out yourself; I'm just trying to be helpful.