Mix flour, sugar and salt together with a fork in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Cut in Crisco until you get pea-sized crumbles (this will only take two minutes of scraping the sides of the Crisco with the fork and tossing it with the flour mixture). Gently stir in the milk, just until combined.

Sprinkle a clean countertop with about 1/4 cup or so of extra flour and put half of the dough on top, forming a soft ball with flour-covered hands. Sprinkle your rolling pin with flour also, and get to work. =) Again, you have to be gentle with pie crust; it doesn’t like to be worked hard like bread dough, and it will rip easily. Just make sure to use a light hand and plenty of flour.

Always start in the middle of the dough and roll out, once up and once down, giving you an oval-shaped dough. Flip the dough and rotate the oval the other way, making sure there’s plenty of flour on the counter and your rolling pin and repeat until it’s large enough to fill your pie plate.

To measure out the dough, invert a pie pan over the dough and use a pizza cutter to cut 1″ to 1 1/2″ around the rim, depending on how much you want at the top of the crust. Flip the pie pan again and pick up the dough by gently draping it over the edge of the rolling pin and rolling it off the counter. Center your pin over the pie pan and unroll it onto the pan, making sure it fits properly. Then you can flute the edges by pinching the outside edge of the crust with your thumb and forefinger and pressing your other thumb against the dough, into the pinch.

If you only need one pie crust, you can refrigerate the dough for a few days and let it soften on the counter before rolling. Or if you have enough leftover crust, I highly recommend rolling out any leftovers, then spreading with butter, cinnamon, and sugar. Cut the dough into 1/2″ strips with your pizza cutter and roll them into pinwheels. They make wonderful little snacks. =)

Oh yes! Back to the crust! Bake at 425F for 10 to 15 minutes, or until light golden brown. If your recipe calls for an unbaked crust, follow the recipes’ directions, covering the edges with foil to prevent them from getting too brown.

I’ve used this recipe for a million pies, including fresh strawberry, fresh blueberry, egg custard, chocolate mousse, butterscotch, etc. AND a crunchy peanut butter pie (look for that recipe in my file … mmm).

Enjoy!