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| This is the best, most flakey pie crust ever! |
If you've never seen a pastry cutter, they're like a manual food processer for pasty dough. And like many things, it has gone through an evolution of its own as man sought to improve the pastry cutter (like making a better mousetrap?)
If you've never seen a pastry cutter, they're like a manual food processer for pasty dough. And like many things, it has gone through an evolution of its own as man sought to improve the pastry cutter (like making a better mousetrap?)
Grammie's pastry cutter looked like an instrument of torture. You can look at it and see that it could be a great tool for running a couple of sharp blades over someone's flesh (click on the photo to enlarge).
Mom's pastry cutter resembled a partially constructed cage or something you might get your fingers stuck in.
And today's seems to be a combination of both torture device and cage. Thus making it supposedly the best tool a-goin'.
Eventually, the food processor was discovered as the best way to whip up a pastry dough. Or so we're gold. All of the pastry cutters are nice and yes, they work. But they're all single task items. The processor can be used for a wide range of things. Oddly enough it was my Dad who introduced the kitchen to the food processor, not Mom.
"I get satisfaction making a dough come together by hand," she told me.
- 14 tablespoons very cold butter (frozen is best) divided into 2/3 cup portions
- 2 1/2 cups plus 2 tbsp flour, chilled in the fridge
- 1 tbsp cold apple cider vinegar
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 5-9 tbsp ice water
- Place the chilled flour into the processor.
- Using the butter in 2/3 cups (leave the rest in the fridge) process until you see pea-sized bits.
- Add in the vinegar and salt.
- Add ice water, 1 tbsp at a time, scraping as needed until the dough comes together.
- Place on floured silpad (Mom used waxed paper) and press together.
- Cover in plastic and chill at least an hour.