I've been making pies with this crust recipe since I was a little girl. Now mind you, I didn't know what I was doing back then. I was just spending time with Grandma making a mess with an edible version of play-dough. She would take a big chunk, roll it out flat, wrap it around her rolling pin and ever so softly, lay it over a round glass dish. After cutting away the parts that flopped over the edge, she would fill it with all different types of fruit coated in sugar and sometimes cinnamon too. There was the one time she used this pink celery that ate before it was baked and it tasted so bad that I refused to eat a piece of her pie for the first time ever. Of course later I learned that rhubarb is a wonderful pie filling but I refused to eat it for many years after that incident.
This pie crust is nice and flaky and though I have her original recipe here that calls for shortening you can substitute it with butter, one for one. There are also no instructions on how to bake as that depends on the pie that you are making. Please check out some of the pie recipes that I have on the site or try it out with your own favorite filling. This yields enough dough for two double crust 9 inch pies. If you don't need that much I suggest freezing the leftover or making, Spice Top Cookies, as my Grandmother called them.
Grandma Jordan’s Pie Crust
4 cups AP Flour
1 tablespoon Sugar
1 teaspoon Salt
1 3/4 cup Cold Shortening or Unsalted Butter
1 tablespoon White Vinegar
1 Large Egg
1/2 cup Cold Water
🥧 In a large bowl whisk together Flour, Sugar and Salt
🥧 Cut the Butter down into 1/4 inch thick slices, if they start to get warm and melt stick the pieces back in the fridge. It is very important that all of the ingredients stay cold.
🥧 In a food processor add in half your Flour mix and Butter, pulse until it starts to resemble a course meal, do not let it come together. Remove and repeat with the other half.
🥧 Beat the Egg and add it to the Flour mix, followed by the Vinegar and the Cold Water. Mix together with a spoon until it all comes together and forms a dough ball.
🥧 Divide the ball into 4 balls, flatten and wrap them with parchment or plastic wrap, leave in the fridge for 1 hour before use.