All Butter Pie Crust

Learn how to make the best all butter pie crust that will result in a flaky, tender, and perfect pie every single time! So you are just 4 ingredients away from a pie crust recipe that will become your new go-to for all of your favorite pies. 

Butter creates a pie crust that is flaky, buttery, and crispy, and it has the benefit of not containing any shortening or other oils. All of the best pies you’ve had have had all butter crusts, and you’ll be a better baker for knowing this super simple recipe. 

I love baking pies! They look much more complicated than they actually are to make, and a beautiful pie is always such an impressive dessert to serve at dinner or parties. Your guest will ooh and ahh over your butter crust pie even before they taste how good it is.

Follow up this recipe with a delicious filling like my fresh cherry pie and a beautiful presentation of a lattice top crust and you’ll have a perfect, delicious, and impressive pie. 

Why You’ll Love this Recipe

1. It’s Buttery! Of course, a pie crust recipe with butter will be buttery, but if you haven’t had a pie with an all butter crust before, you are in for a treat. You can taste the butter in the crust, plus the texture is amazing. 
2. Only 4 Ingredients. Butter, Flour, Salt, and Water. That’s it! You already have these things in your kitchen, which means that you’re already ready to make a pie. 
3. Easy to Make Ahead. This pie crust needs an hour to chill, but can easily be made ahead up to 3 days. Prep your dough and store it in the fridge until you’re ready to use it. 
4. No Shortening. While you can make a pie crust with Crisco, you won’t get the same texture and flavor that butter gives. Butter also is a bit healthier than shortening, providing protein and nutrients that solid hydrogenated vegetable oils cannot.
5. Very Flaky. I’m showing you how to make sure your pie crust is flaky, and let’s be real, flaky is the best adjective when it comes to pie crust. You want it to hold your pie together, but be crispy and tender to cut into.
6. Single Crust. For simplicity, the recipe I’m sharing is the correct amount for a single crust pie, like pumpkin, or pecan pie. You can easily double the amounts to create a double crust for pies such as cherry or blueberry pie.

Ingredients in All Butter Pie Crust

• Flour. Regular all-purpose flour is the perfect thing for this simple recipe. Sift your flour to work out any clumps and aerate it a bit before mixing. 
• Unsalted Butter. Start with cold pieces of butter, cut into ½ inch cubes. It’s important to keep your butter cold throughout the dough making process, and we’ll talk more about that in a minute. Unsalted butter is preferred whenever you’re baking, so that you can control the amount of salt in the finished product.
• Salt. We do need to season our pie crust, and salt is the only seasoning needed. Use a regular table salt rather than a coarse grind, so that the salt crystals can evenly mix into the dough.
• Ice Cold Water. The colder you can get your water, the better. The secret to a gorgeous flaky pie crust is keeping the butter cold, and ice water will help with that. I like to just keep the water with ice in it until I’m ready to mix and then use my hand to keep the ice out of the water when I pour it.

Complete list of ingredients and amounts can be found in the recipe card below.

How to Make an All Butter Pie Crust

1. Combine. In a medium bowl, combine flour and salt. Add cold, cubed butter.
2. Mix. Mix the butter, flour, and salt together with a pastry cutter until it resembles coarse crumbs. You can also use a food processor, and pulse the flour mixture with butter carefully in intervals.
3. Add Water. Add ice cold water to the dough a little at a time just until the dough comes together. You may not need the entire ¼ cup of water.
4. Chill. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about an hour and up to 3 days.

1. Roll. Remove the dough from the refrigerator, lightly flour a flat surface, and roll the dough out into a 13 inch circle and transfer it to a 9 inch pie plate or dish. Place the crust in the fridge until you are ready to fill.

Tips For Working with a Butter Pie Crust Recipe

• You Must Keep It Cold. I might be repeating myself, but it’s very important that the butter stays cold before, during, and after mixing up this dough. The reason for this is that the small bits of butter get wrapped up in flour as we mix up the dough with the pastry cutter. Those small bits of butter expand during cooking and create pockets that give us the flaky texture we’re after. If you allow the butter to melt even a little during mixing, you let the butter lose its power. All butter pie dough should be cold up until the minute you put the pie in the oven. Use your refrigerator any time you need to keep it that way. 
• Use the Right Ingredients. There are only four ingredients, so make sure you’re using the best ones and the right types. It’s important that you use unsalted butter, and the fresher that is, the better. It’s also important that you use fine grain salt so that you don’t have salty bites in your crust. 
• For Blind Baking, Use Pie Weights. If you are making a single crust pie that requires you to bake the crust before adding the filling, make sure that you weigh down the crust before baking. The butter will expand and create large air bubbles that will make the crust mostly useless if you don’t. Purchase weights made for pie making, or simply line the crust with parchment paper or foil and use some dried beans to weigh it down.

• Use a Pie Shield. Sometimes when baking a pie, the edges of the crust will be finished cooking before the rest of the pie is. This isn’t a problem if you’re prepared for it! Pie shields can be purchased, or made using strips of foil, to cover the crust during the last minutes of baking to avoid burning.

Recommended Pie Crust Tools

• Rolling Pin – We’ll use this to roll out the dough perfectly even. 
• Pastry Cutter – This is the tool you need to mix the butter and flour together. 
• Pie Pan – To make your pie. This recipe works best for a 9 inch pie plate.

Frequently Asked Questions About Butter Pie Crust

More Delicious Pie Recipes

• Cherry Pie
• Blueberry Pie
• Peach Pie
• Pecan Pie
• Oatmeal Pie
• Pumpkin Pie
• Sweet Potato Pie
• Apple Pie
• Fresh Strawberry Pie
• Vegan Apple Pie
• Apple Slab Pie

Yay! Now you have my personal best and favorite all-butter pie crust and you can go out and make perfect, flaky pies for any occasion. Be sure to pin this recipe so more people can enjoy it too.

Did you make this? Be sure to leave a review below and tag me on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest!

Recipe

5 from 9 votes

(Click stars to rate!)

All Butter Pie Crust

Prep Time: 15 minutes mins

Total Time: 15 minutes mins

Author: Diana

• Pin It

Print Rate Recipe

This recipe for all butter pie crust is flaky, tender, and delicious. It comes together in minutes with just four simple ingredients.

1 pie crust

This recipe for all butter pie crust is flaky, tender, and delicious. It comes together in minutes with just four simple ingredients.

Equipment

• Pastry cutter
• Glass bowl
• Rolling Pin

Ingredients 

1/2x1x2x3x

• ▢ 1 ¼ cups (156 grams) all purpose flour sifted
• ▢ 8 tablespoons tablespoons (113 grams) unsalted butter cut into ½ inch pieces, 1 stick in total
• ▢ ¼ teaspoon (1 gram) salt
• ▢ ¼ cup (60 ml) ice cold water

Instructions 

• In a medium bowl combine flour and salt. Add cold cubed butter.
• Mix the butter, flour and salt together with a pastry cutter until it resembles coarse crumbs.
• Add ice cold water to the dough a little at a time just until the dough comes together (you don’t have to use the whole ¼ cup).
• Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about an hour and up to 3 days.
• Remove one dough ball from the refrigerator and roll it out into a 13-inch circle and transfer to a 9-inch pie dish. Place the crust back in the fridge until you’re ready to add the filling.

Notes:

This recipe creates one 13 inch circle of pie dough, or enough to make a single crust pie. For a double crust pie, double this recipe.

Nutrition Information

Calories: 1372kcal, Carbohydrates: 119g, Protein: 17g, Fat: 92g, Saturated Fat: 58g, Polyunsaturated Fat: 4g, Monounsaturated Fat: 24g, Trans Fat: 4g, Cholesterol: 241mg, Sodium: 597mg, Potassium: 194mg, Fiber: 4g, Sugar: 0.5g, Vitamin A: 2799IU, Calcium: 51mg, Iron: 7mg

This website provides approximate nutrition information for convenience and as a courtesy only. Nutrition data is gathered primarily from the USDA Food Composition Database, whenever available, or otherwise other online calculators.

© Little Sunny Kitchen