We featured Chef Michael Mech’s great grandmother’s Pecan Crescent Cookies in our 13 Days of Christmas Cookie series and they were a huge hit. Knowing what a great baker she was, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share her secrets for making homemade pie crust. —Editor
“Many shy away from crafting a homemade pie, due to the complexity of the crust. This story and recipe is for them. My Great Grandmother Schade, famous for her Pecan Crescent Cookies, was an amazing baker. She truly had the touch. She was the first generation born in this country and lived from the days of horse and buggy to seeing man land on the moon.
Her pies were legendary and, as a child, I was invited into her small kitchen to learn her magic. The butter and shorting always had to be the right temperature and cubed to the correct size with a surgeons skill. Never over mixing, and adding a special ingredient, Heinz Vinegar, always Heinz.
In addition to Heinz Vinegar, Grandma’s pie magic included her passion for John Phillip Sousa’s music as she would always play his marches on her crank Victrola while we made pie crust. She would say, ‘Making a pie crust takes precession, just like a great march, and no one does a march better the Mr. Sousa. Now listen to the music. Roll the dough, turn the dough.’ And on she would go with her loving marching orders.”
This recipe yields one 9-inch two-crust pie or two bottom-crust pies.