1. Dice your butter as small as you can.  Transfer to a mixing bowl.

2. Measure out your flour, salt and sugar.  If you substitute unsalted butter, I definitely recommend adding the salt.  Otherwise, it’s optional.  

3.  Cover and refrigerate these ingredients for 30 minutes or overnight.  Refrigerate 1/2 cup of water as well.

4. With your hands, break up the butter into smaller pieces.  The smaller you diced it the less work this will be here.  You want the butter to be crumbled into chunks about the size of a pea or shelled fava bean.  If you would prefer not to use your hands to break up the butter, check out our How To Make Pie Crust blog post which outlines alternative methods.

5. Add the chilled water.  Work quickly with the dough to incorporate the water.  You don’t want to overwork it, it will still be pretty crumbly.  

6. Compress the dough as much as you can.  Wrap the dough with plastic wrap.  Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

7.  Roll the dough out into a rectangle about 1/2 inch thick.  Cut into thirds and stack them.  Roll out again into a rectangle.  Repeat cutting, stacking and rolling 3-5 times, working quickly. 

Note: the dough will still be really crumbly when you start rolling it out and you’ll be tempted to add more water.  After about the 3rd time rolling and cutting it will start to come together.  Until then, just do your best to pile it together.

8.  Cut the final rectangle into 4 pieces (or 8 pieces if making a double batch).  Wrap and refrigerate or freeze until ready to use.  Each piece makes a bottom or top of a pie, or a 9 inch tart so a single batch will yield 2 8-9 inch covered pies or 4 open pies or tarts.