Pie crust

This is a follow up to the quiche post. On reflection, the crust on that quiche was the best pie crust I have ever made. I have a long history of crust-related disasters, so I thought I'd better get this one up on the internet before I forget everything. Let this post stand as proof that miracles do happen.

1 stick butter
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
up to 1/4 cup ice water (I used about 1/8 cup this time)
1/2 teaspoon vinegar


Cut butter up into small pieces to aid mixing. Using a fork, mix butter, flour, and salt until uniformly crumbly. Add vinegar and give a quick mix again. Add enough water to form the dough into a slightly sticky ball. By this point I had given up on utensils and was using my hands to mix; it's just easier. 


Chill in refrigerator for an hour. Roll out. Makes one 9 inch pie crust (with a little bit left over for covering up mistakes). 

A few changes from my usual (usually failed) pie crust. First up: vinegar. I'm not sure what it's doing, but it's probably some sort of black magic, or possibly science. A quick internet search tells me that acid breaks down gluten strands that form in dough. Shorter gluten strands make for a more tender (flakier) end product. Another change from my usual method was taking time to chill the crust before baking. Chilling the dough will re-solidify the butter, separating it from the flour, which will result in a flakier crust.  Bonus: chilled dough doesn't stick to the counter as badly as room temperature dough.

And an update on the spinach quiche: strangers liked it too.

Spinach Quiche

It's taken me a long time to get this silly quiche made. We've just moved into a new kitchen (well, a whole new apartment, state, and all) and despite having gone to the store countless times in the past week we always seem to be one to two ingredients short of a meal. But last nights the stars aligned and we wound up with this delicious quiche:

(Thanks to Heather for the awesome pie server!)

May I point out how pretty my crust turned out?

For the insides:

3 ounces room temperature cream cheese
1/3 cup half and half
3 eggs
10 ounces frozen spinach, thawed and drained
4 green onions, sliced
3/4 cup cheese, I used a mixture of white cheddar and monterrey jack
salt and pepper


Beat cream cheese, half & half, and eggs. Add the rest. Pour in unbaked pie shell. Bake at 425 for 25 minutes. Let set for 10 minutes before serving. 


Not hard to make. Promise. Obviously we liked this; we ate half the pie before I could find my camera. We ate our quiche with pan fried potatoes and I set off the fire alarm for the first time in our new apartment! Yay! Fred-the-cat hid under the couch.