EASY, FLAKEY SOURDOUGH PIE CRUST

Sourdough pie crust is a wonderful way to add depth and interest to your favourite pie recipes, not to mention its health benefits. This recipe is so easy and yet gives a spectacular result, of a moreish flakey pastry that has a slight tang and a satisfying buttery crumble. Easy to whip up and a real delight to share.

This crust can be for both sweet and savoury pies, sugar can be reduced or omitted if desired for savoury versions (see note 2). The quantities are for both the bottom and top crust, so these can be halved if you are making an open pie or tart.

STORAGE

The pastry can be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated for up to four days or frozen for up to 4 months.

HOW TO MAKE SOURDOUGH PIE CRUST

Combine flour, salt and sugar in a mixing bowl. Add refrigerated butter cubes, and then rub flour mix and butter together between the fingertips until mixture resembles wet sand.

Then add sourdough starter and combine well. Very small lumps of butter will remain in the dough mix, which is what is needed to create a flakey crust.

Once combined, wrap dough in greaseproof paper and refrigerate for a minimum of 2 hours or for up to four days.

When ready to bake pie, take dough from refrigerator and halve in to two round disks. Roll one disk on a well floured surface until quite thin, approximately 1/8 inch or 3 mm thick, flipping over throughout to coat with flour and prevent from sticking to the countertop. Rolled out, It should be roughly 14 inches or 35 cm in diameter.

Place dough in a greased pie dish. You can use a standard 9.5 inch or 24 cm one. In these images I’ve used a smaller one (7.5 inches or 19.5 cm), and leftover dough was used to make smaller pies or frozen. Roll out second disk of dough for the top crust, and then fill, decorate and bake pie according to your recipe.

TIPS

1. Cold butter and then refrigerated dough are key to a good result with this pie pastry. It’s very important that the cubed butter comes straight out of the refrigerator before mixing with flour, and then the pastry dough itself is stored in the refrigerator for 2 hours minimum. This ensures the very small lumps of butter don’t completely combine with the flour, as warm butter would, and so creates the lovely flakey texture.
2. My sourdough starter was 100% hydration, which means the flour and water were of equal amounts, which ensures the dough is moist enough. If you’re using a lower hydration starter, you may need to add iced water until it is the desired consistency.