My grandma's advice on pie crust just flipped my whole process around

I was struggling with getting my pie dough to stay flaky, and my 82-year-old grandma watched me for like 5 minutes last Sunday. She just said 'stop overthinking it, the butter should be the size of peas not crumbs' and walked away. Turns out I was grinding my butter too fine for years, making the crust tough. Any of you bakers have a relative's offhand tip that totally changed how you do something?

2 comments

2 Comments

king.kevin11d ago

Peas size butter but cold vodka works better for flakiness than ice water.

lily9711d agoMost Upvoted

Wait, vodka?? I had to read that twice @king.kevin because I thought you were pulling my leg. My grandma would probably smack me if I swapped out her ice water for booze, but now I'm genuinely curious - does it not mess with the flavor? I've been using ice water my whole life and never even considered that.