Easy Butter Pie Dough (In a Food Processor)

A homemade pie dough doesn't need to be difficult and the best tool to bring it together quickly and easily is a food processor. Simply add all the dry ingredients and butter to the base of a food processor and pulse until crumbly. Then add just enough water to bring the dough together.

We can't argue that store-bought pie dough is more convenient than homemade. There's not much easier than simply opening a package when you want to make a pie. But, we will argue that homemade pie dough is far superior, taste and texture, compared to store bought dough. Of course, the one caveat is pie dough sold from a local bakery, but not everyone is lucky enough to have bakeries that sell their own doughs (plus they can be super expensive). So if you want the best possible homemade crust in as convenient way as possible, then look no further than the food processor.

Using a food processor to prepare pie dough makes for a super simple, yet highly effective method. The blade of the food processor cuts the butter into the flour, making for a lovely flaky crust.

Try using this homemade pie dough in our Rhubarb Galette recipe. The homemade dough makes for a delicious, flaky crust to the mouth-watering rhubarb filling. You could also use this dough in place of the cookie crust for our Mini Rustic Peach Custard Pies.

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• Easy Butter Pie Dough (In a Food Processor)

Ingredients that Matter

These ingredients are probably already in your pantry and refrigerator:

• All-Purpose Flour. Good old all-purpose flour is our flour of choice when making a homemade pie crust. We've made plenty of pie crusts with other flours, including whole wheat, white whole wheat, pastry, whole wheat pastry and even rye. All of these make fine doughs, but our favorite for classic pie crust is all-purpose.
• Unsalted Butter. A pie crust is nothing more than a dough made of flour and fat, plus a small amount of other ingredients, and several fats work here. It's best if they are solid fats, like vegetable shortening or lard, but we tend to prefer butter crusts simply because we always have butter around and we love the flavor of all-butter crusts. It's critical to keep the butter cold as you make the crust or else the butter will melt and the crust won't flake well.
• Salt. You need a small amount of salt in most baked goods otherwise they'll taste terribly bland. The same goes for a basic homemade pie crust. We like ½ teaspoon of table salt, but you can use your salt of choice. Just don't add too much or the salt can actually be off-putting.
• Apple Cider Vinegar. We could keep this as optional, and you can keep it out if you prefer, but we always add a splash of apple cider vinegar to our pie dough to help it from discoloring, plus vinegar can help limit gluten production, meaning a more tender, less tough crust.
• Ice Water. Adding water to the flour and butter mixture helps hold the dough together, but it's critical the water is very cold, like ice cold. This again helps limit gluten production and keeps the butter from melting before it bakes.
• Sugar (optional). When making a dough for sweet pie, we like to add 1 tablespoon of sugar. You can keep it out if using the crust in a savory application.

See recipe card for quantities.

Instructions

Hint: Did you know you can freeze pie dough? Be sure the dough is wrapped tightly in plastic wrap (we like to place the wrapped dough in a freezer safe zip-top bag) and store in the freezer for up to 3 months. 

This recipe makes a single pie dough. Double the recipe to make two crusts.

Storage

You can store the pie dough, wrapped tightly in plastic wrap, in the refrigerator for about 3 days. It's important the dough is wrapped well to avoid exposing it to oxygen and drying out. Or, you can also freeze the dough for up to 3 months, but be sure to store the dough in plastic wrap and place in a freezer-safe zip-top bag.

FAQ

Desserts

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Dinner Ideas

Do you want some inspiration for dinner? Try out these recipes:

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