Kitchen Tips Tuesday: Spray It

This tip comes courtesy of King Arthur Flour, who has a wonderful blog called Flourish, as well as a beautifully executed new magazine called Sift. We have done several posts on the perfect pie crust technique, but this tip is one we hadn’t been privvy to in the past.
When making pie crust, instead of adding the water tablespoon by tablespoon, try using a spray bottle to get just the right amount of water into the dough. The idea is that using a little less water than normal will yield a flakier crust. They recommend spraying the dough with water and folding it until it comes together, but still seems somewhat dry and crumbly. After wrapping the dough in paper or plastic wrap and allowing it to sit for 30 minutes in the refrigerator, the gluten in the flour starts to relax, the fat begins to harden, and water redistributes itself to make the dough smoother and easy to roll. Those hard bits of fat will work with the flour to make the crust flakey when baked. Try it and see if you notice a difference!

Indigo jones