Kitchen

[AprilBird]

One thing Laura W. showed at one point with the dicing kit was dicing butter to have for making a pie crust.  Has anyone done this?

I have never made a pie crust in my life and really wasn't that interested in trying, but....  my frozen store bought pie crust has been failing miserable for the last seveal years with my pecan pie(only pie I make & only at Thanksgiving & Christmas).  I decided to try and make a pie crust in my kitchenaid FP and thought I would do the thing with dicing the butter, first.  I could not get it to work.  I froze the butter first for a few hours.  It just kept jamming right away each time I tried, except the last at which point it just started to cream it and never diced it into the bowl.  Possibly 'too' frozen or maybe not frozen enough?

I gave up and diced up the frozen butter by hand and then proceeded.  I used the dough blade.  Is that right or for a pie crust should I have used the 'regular' blade?

Mixed up the dough, but won't actually be cooking the pie until tonight.  Should it fail, it will give me time to try again (or got get my frozen dough from the store...  again)

[KYToby]

I do not know about using the dicing kit for butter.  Normally, I just use very cold butter that I dice by hand then freeze first.

The regular metal blade is better for making crust, though.  The plastic dough blade is made to knead dough and develop gluten when can lead to a tough crust.

[jaxs mom]

I don't use frozen butter when making pie crust. I use cold refrigerated butter. I also don't dice it alone in the food processor. I do just use a knife and cut it into squares before adding it to the flour in the food processor and then pulse until it's mixed and looks like coarse crumbs. I'm not sure why she's making it more complicated than it needs to be. I've been making homemade pie crust forever. 

You do not want to use the dough blade, use the metal chopping blade..