How to Make an Ugly Oil Pie Crust

A couple of years ago my Mom decided that it was her year to finally figure out how to make a pie crust. She goes through seasons where she likes to find herself a challenge and then she spends every weekend cooking until she is satisfied. We were lucky enough that her first challenge was to get the perfect Saturday morning pancakes to perfection. And we were pretty excited about the pie crust challenge also. That is until she started. I do not think I have ever seen her so stressed in the kitchen as when she was squeezing butter between her fingers and rushing the roll out her dough before it cooled. And then watching her try to transfer it to the pie pan, only to see the entire thing fall apart, made us run for cover. That is when I decided I would always be fine with using a store-bought pie crust in my future. Until one night we didn’t have anything for dinner but chicken, and what I really wanted was apple pie. Mom said if we made it, we could actually have it for dinner, but we did not have any pie crusts in the refrigerator. Challenge accepted.

We remembered seeing a pie crust on our Cousin Ben’s blog, and he said,

“The benefit of the oil pie crust is that it’s dead simple. There is no worrying about butter melting on you or not getting the right folded layers. You don’t have to roll it into perfectly shaped anything.”

Well, that sounds good to me.

Can We Really Have Apple Pie for Dinner?

Before we started, we had to confirm that my Mom wasn’t joking. If we were going to make this much of a mess and commit to making a homemade pie crust, we wanted to be sure she wasn’t teasing. With that confirmed, we gathered our ingredients. We needed two pie crusts for the top and bottom, so we doubled his recipe.

You Do Not Need a Mixer for an Oil Pie Crust:

The first thing that scared us was the fact that there was not a mixer involved.

We poured our oil into the flour and then started to slowly add some of the iced water. It was much harder to keep the ice out of the mixture than I had thought! We had to pull some out a few times.

Surprisingly, this came together with a fork just as Cousin Ben said it would. We did not even make it through the rest of the water before we noticed it was forming a nice dough.

After splitting it in two, we started the process of rolling the dough. This is where it all fell apart for my Mom, so I was pretty nervous. Although it was stiffer than I thought it would be, I just kept pressing with my hands until the ball flattened a bit before I started rolling.

I was scared when I noticed all of the edges breaking apart, but I just kept rolling in different directions and hoped for the best.

Transferring the Oil Pie Crust to the Pie Dish:

After it was relatively even and large enough to cover our pie dish, I wanted to quit. I was having flashbacks to my Mom’s crust falling into tiny pieces all over the counter. So I actually put the dish on top of the dough and then slowly turned the whole thing over together.

It worked! I mean, there were a few places that broke, but I just patched them up with some of the parts that fell off.

I just kept thinking, “No chicken for dinner, no chicken for dinner.”

After I filled the bottom with apple pie filling, I rolled out the dough for the top. Now what? I couldn’t exactly flip it over again. I decided to take a big breath and try to gently lift the parchment paper while keeping my hand on the dough in hopes I could slowly transfer it over.

I would not say it worked perfectly, but it did make it on without a complete disaster.

Now to make it pretty.

Well, I will rephrase. Now to try and make it pretty.

What was the word Cousin Ben used? Rustic charm? I will could go with that. Or I could just call it an ugly oil pie crust and enjoy it for dinner!