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You are here: Home / Recipes / My Favorite Buttermilk Pie Crust

My Favorite Buttermilk Pie Crust

05/28/16 | Desserts, Recipes

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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!

Rolled out buttermilk pie dough with text: My Favorite Buttermilk Pie Crust.

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.

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

  1. It’s SO delicious and flaky. It’s an all butter crust, and nothing beats the rich taste of pure butter in pie crust.
  2. It’s incredibly easy to work with when rolling out and shaping.
  3. 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.

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.

Drizzle in buttermilk…

Buttermilk being poured into food processor for pie dough.

…and pulse until mixture just begins to clump together.

Buttermilk pie crust being made in food processor.

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

Pie dough being made.

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.

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.

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.

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!
4.98 from 35 votes
Print
Prep Time: 20 minutes minutes
Total Time: 1 hour hour 20 minutes minutes
Servings (Hover or Click to Change Yield): 10
Calories: 284kcal
Author: Tracy

Ingredients

Full Batch (9-inch Double Crust)

  • 1 cup (8oz, 2 sticks) cold unsalted butter cut into 1/2-inch chunks
  • 2 1/2 cups (300g) all-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon (13g) 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 (4oz, 1 stick) cold unsalted butter cut into 1/2-inch chunks
  • 1 1/4 cups (150g) 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 (2oz) cold unsalted butter cut into 1/2-inch chunks
  • 1/2 cup and 2 tablespoons (75g) 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

*If you measured your flour by weight, you will need closer to 1/2 cup of buttermilk for a full double crust, but if you measure your flour by volume, you will almost certainly technically have more than 2 1/2 cups of flour (scooping flour into measuring cups tends to compress it), so you will probably end up needing closer to 2/3 cup. Use just enough buttermilk for your dough to hold together. Using too much can result in a tough, crunchy finished product.
Did you make this recipe?I'd love to see it! Tag @BakingMischief or hashtag it #BakingMischief.

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.

*Links marked with an asterisk are affiliate links, which means I receive small commission if you make a purchase using them. There is absolutely no additional cost to you.

Comments | 68 comments

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Comments

  1. Shannon says

    December 1, 2024 at 1:42 pm

    5 stars
    I love baking, I make pretty much everything, but the ONE thing I have never been able to do right is pie crust, so I’d pretty much given up on pies entirely. However, I wanted to try again and make a Dutch Apple Pie this Thanksgiving and this recipe looked pretty easy so I tried it. It came out so good! Easy to put together and turned out flaky and tasty! Thanks so much for the recipe, it will be my go to from now on. So happy I can finally bake a good pie

    Reply
    • Tracy says

      December 15, 2024 at 5:09 am

      Yay! I’m so happy you had success with this recipe!!

      Reply
  2. Katheryn says

    November 22, 2023 at 8:36 am

    Can you use salted butter and omit the salt
    ?

    Reply
    • Tracy says

      November 22, 2023 at 10:05 am

      Yes, that will work!

      Reply
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Welcome!


Hi, I'm Tracy! Welcome to Baking Mischief, where we realize that not everyone is cooking every night for a family of four. We have delicious sweet and savory recipes, mostly scaled for one or two, and we love our pop culture around here, so keep an eye out for film, book, and TV-inspired treats as well! Read more»
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