My Favorite Buttermilk Pie Crust

My favorite flaky, delicious buttermilk pie crust (made with a food processor). This is seriously the easiest pie dough you will ever make or work with!

Hey, it’s a Saturday. What’s a Baking Mischief recipe doing in your feed!? Welcome to Simple Saturdays!

I have a ton of foundation recipes or simple tips and tricks I have been wanting to add to the blog but just haven’t been able to fit into the Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.

I’ve simply published a couple of them backdated in the feed so I can link to them in recipes, but adding another posting day to the schedule seemed like the best compromise to make sure they are seen (and can therefore be of use), so every other Saturday, we’ll have a simple recipe, trick, or maybe a round up I’ve been dying to do.

And if you have any requests for posts or something you would like to see, shoot me an email ! I want to post the things that are going to best help you!

Okay, table setting aside. On to the recipe: My Favorite Buttermilk Pie Crust! You’ve seen this recipe before. I used it for my Green Eggs and Ham Mini Quiche , my Easy Beef Pasties , and it will show up again in a recipe this Friday, but I know pie crust can be intimidating for a lot of people (it certainly was for me), so I wanted to do a step by step walk through.

Buttermilk pie dough being cut into rounds. - 2

Buttermilk pie dough being cut into rounds. - 3

I LOVE this pie crust for these reasons, in this order:

It’s SO delicious and flaky. It’s an all butter crust, and nothing beats the rich taste of pure butter in pie crust.
It’s incredibly easy to work with when rolling out and shaping.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to make. Seriously. I have pictures to prove it.

This method uses a food processor. You CAN make this dough with a pastry cutter * and a bowl–that’s how I make most of my other pie crusts to ensure a nice and flaky finished product, but this dough produces such a flaky crust that making it in the food processor doesn’t seem to affect it at all. So for the convenience, if at all possible, I say use a food processor!

If you don’t own one, this is the food processor I have *, and I love it.

This recipe makes about 24 ounces of dough. That’s enough for two 9-inch crusts. A half batch will make a single 9-inch crust or two 6-inch pie crusts for mini pies. If you have a small food processor, I recommend making only a half batch at a time, as the 5-cup models will have trouble processing this amount of dough.

And now how to make the easiest buttermilk pie crust in the world:

Dump all the dry ingredients in your food processor.

Flour in a food processor to make buttermilk pie crust. - 4

Flour in a food processor to make buttermilk pie crust. - 5

Add chilled butter and pulse until butter is about the size of a pea.

Collage photo of butter being cut into flour for pie dough. - 6

Collage photo of butter being cut into flour for pie dough. - 7

Drizzle in buttermilk…

Buttermilk being poured into food processor for pie dough. - 8

Buttermilk being poured into food processor for pie dough. - 9

…and pulse until mixture just begins to clump together.

Buttermilk pie crust being made in food processor. - 10

Buttermilk pie crust being made in food processor. - 11

You know it’s done and has enough liquid if it holds its shape when pressed together.

Lay a sheet of plastic wrap on the counter and dump half of the mixture onto the wrap.

Pile of buttermilk pie crust crumbs before being shaped. - 14

Pile of buttermilk pie crust crumbs before being shaped. - 15

Press tightly into a disk (if you are going to make full, round crusts, make your disk as circular as possible since it will make rolling easier later–these were destined to become mini pie crusts so I didn’t bother) and repeat with the other half of the crumbs. Store in a plastic bag and refrigerate for at least an hour, up to two days before using.

Buttermilk pie dough in bags ready for the freezer. - 16

Buttermilk pie dough in bags ready for the freezer. - 17

Roll out, shape, and make into something delicious like:

Easy Dutch Apple Pie
Game of Thrones Frey Pie
Pie Crust Pizza Tarts
Individual Chicken Pot Pies
Mini Dutch Apple Galette

P.S. If you have any leftover scraps of pie dough, check out this post on What to Do With Leftover Pie Dough .

Ingredients

Full Batch (9-inch Double Crust)

▢ 1 cup ( 8 oz, 2 sticks) cold unsalted butter cut into 1/2-inch chunks
▢ 2 1/2 cups ( 300 g) all-purpose flour
▢ 1 tablespoon ( 13 g) granulated sugar
▢ 1 teaspoon salt
▢ 1/2 to 2/3 cup buttermilk*

Half Batch (9-inch Single Crust or 6-inch Double Crust)

▢ 8 tablespoons ( 4 oz, 1 stick) cold unsalted butter cut into 1/2-inch chunks
▢ 1 1/4 cups ( 150 g) all-purpose flour
▢ 2 teaspoons granulated sugar
▢ 1/2 teaspoon salt
▢ 1/4 to 1/3 cup buttermilk

Quarter Batch (6-inch Single Crust)

▢ 4 tablespoons ( 2 oz) cold unsalted butter cut into 1/2-inch chunks
▢ 1/2 cup and 2 tablespoons ( 75 g) all-purpose flour
▢ 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
▢ 1/4 teaspoon salt
▢ 2 tablespoons to 2 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons buttermilk

Instructions

Before you begin measuring everything out, place the cubed butter in the freezer to chill.
Stir together flour, sugar, and salt, and pour into the food processor. Add butter and pulse until butter is cut into the flour, but still has visible chunks no larger than a pea.
While pulsing, slowly pour in 1/2 cup of the buttermilk (1/4 for half batch, 2 tablespoons for a quarter batch) and continue to pulse until the buttermilk is incorporated into the dough. At this point, your dough should look like rough crumbs and just hold its shape if squeezed together. If the dough does not, add a a little more buttermilk, a teaspoon at a time.
Lay a sheet of plastic wrap on the counter and dump half of your dough crumbs onto the sheet. (If you are making only a single crust, do not divide dough.) Gather the edges and press tightly together to form a 1-inch thick disk. Do the same with the rest of the dough. Place in a plastic bag and refrigerate for at least an hour, up to 24.

Notes

Nutritional Information Recipe Adapted From: B.Britnell Make-ahead Instructions: This dough does very well when made ahead of time. Simply store as shown, in the refrigerator, and use within 48 hours or freeze. Freezer Instructions: Freeze plastic-wrapped dough in a freezer bag and keep for up to 3 months. To use, defrost in the refrigerator overnight.

Super easy Tinto De Verano red wine popsicles made with your favorite red wine, lemon lime soda, and a homemade lime simple syrup. Delicious, boozy treats perfect for a grown-up summer.

Well, we made it. A whole month of nerdy recipes and Nerd Month is finally coming to a close with a show that is very dear to my black heart, Black Books .

Black Books (available on Hulu and Netflix) is an earlier effort from the creator of the IT Crowd (which also got the Nerd Month treatment in the form of Sea Parks Mashed Potatoes) . It’s just as funny but with slightly worse people.

Main character Bernard Black (possibly one of my favorite characters ever) is terrible, misanthropic, bitter, mean, and owns/lives above a book shop where he never seems to actually sell any books.

He is also quite fond of the drink and on one hot day, comes up with the best possible way of enjoying one.

Would that we all could be as brilliant as Bernard Black, (we can’t) but we can booze like him. Wine Lolly, anyone?

Coming up with these red wine popsicles was actually a ton of fun because I’m not a huge drinker of red wine and had no idea how to make it into a palatable popsicle. When I came across the Tinto De Verano cocktail, an easy mix of Spanish red wine and lime soda, I knew it would make the perfect summery popsicle.

I made a batch and while it was a good cocktail, the frozen popsicles were a little bland. So for round two, I added a lime simple syrup to the mix, and that did the trick.

You still have the deep richness of the red wine (use whatever type you like best), but the tartness of the lime and sugar sweet of the syrup make the popsicles so much tastier. If you are looking for a boozy frozen summer treat, it doesn’t get much better than this.

I think even Bernard Black would approve.

Going into summer without a popsicle mold? This is the one * I bought recently and am very happy with. The plastic base feels high quality and I’ve had no trouble with the lid catching on the sticks when you go to remove it, which seems to be a problem with a ton of models. I’ll report back next summer on the mold’s longevity, but so far, I love it!