I’ve always thought that whatever filling happens to be between the layers in a pie, served only as the liquid to moisten the star of the whole pie show – the crust.

I must admit to having used frozen, mix and rolled pie crusts over the years, but as you might suspect, they were convenient, but lacking.

This year, I decided to put all of my creative efforts into making the Perfect Pie Crust – and I think I may have achieved it.

I read over and over that Lard was the essential ingredient for tender but flaky crust. I also wanted to use butter.  So with reckless abandon and with no regard to caloric count, I used half lard, half butter.  I think that may be the magic.

So, without further ado – here is what I consider to be the Perfect Pie Crust. This is enough for one two-crust pie, or two single-crust pies.

1/2 cup lard

1/2 cup butter

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

5 to 7 tablespoons ice water

Mix butter and lard in a food processor, add salt.

Add 1 cup of the flour and pulse to mix

Add 2nd cup of the flour, pulsing till the mixture is coarse

Move the dough into a bowl, and add ice water 2 Tablespoons at a time, mixing gently with your hands just until the dough forms a dry ball.

Turn out onto a floured pastry board and gently roll to the size of your pie pan.

As you can see, we had to sample it first, just to make sure that it really was perfect. It could be that I also used the Perfect Apple Pie recipe which helped the pie crust achieve it’s own perfect-ness.  But that, my friends is another blog post.