Let pastry chef David Crofton show you how to assemble the ingredients for an apple pie in this Howcast food video.
Now we’re going to work on a double crust apple pie. So that means there’s a crust on the bottom of the pie obviously, but then a crust on the top. It makes a really beautiful presentation. It’s a classic apple pie that people go crazy for.
Let’s start assembling the pie crust. So we’ve got some regular all-purpose flour, and then a little bit of sugar and a little bit of salt as well. And I’ll just process that, just for one second, just to mix everything up. Now we’re going to add the butter, and it has to be really, really cold. So when I make a pie crust I keep it in the refrigerator until right when I’m about to put the ingredients all together. That’s a little cube of butter, just a half inch cube. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but you should really make sure that you cube it because you can’t put in huge chunks of butter. But remember it has to be cold. That’s essential.
You can dump it all in the food processor. And then remember, pulse this. And what you’re looking for, you’re looking for the butter to get cut up until it’s about pea size, is what they always say, pea size chunks of butter. And basically what happens is the blades of the food processor cut the butter up, and then that exposed butter gets covered with flour. And that’s how you get a flaky crust. It’s where I want it to be. Now I’m just going to add a little bit of ice water.
Now this also needs to be cold, but it’s got the ice cubes in it, so that water’s nice and cold. I’m just going to start. You want to do this by eye. I think I asked for about three to five tablespoons but process it a little bit, and you’ll get used to what you’re looking for. The butter will start coming together. The crust will start to climb up the side of the mixer, a little bit at a time. I’m just going to check it. That’s just about right. That’s where I want it to be. So it’s going to come together. If you squeeze it, it’ll come together and hold its shape, but it’s still crumbly inside the mixer.
I’m going to pop it out onto my work surface. Just be careful of the blade. Just spread it out a little bit. Mash it out. It gives a little more flakiness to the crust. That’s called fraiche, if you want to get fancy. And you want these to be two even pie crusts. You can get a scale out if you want to be exact, but if you’re pretty close I think you’ll be happy with the result. Usually, if one’s a little bit bigger than the other, I will use that as the bottom crust. And there you go. Two nice pie crusts.
So I’m going to wrap those up in plastic wrap and stick them in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes or a half hour. So let them cool and firm up a little bit before I roll them out to make the crust.