Mr. Lake's New Orleans Forum

He said it was ok if I posted it. I used it for the first time for a rhubarb custard pie I was amazed how long the crust stayed crunchy.
its 3-2-1
3 parts flour
2 parts butter
1 part ice water
I put flour & butter in my little food processor til crumbly, then added water til just right. Not sure how he does his mixing of it.

I used one cup of flour for my one crust pie.

Thanks so much, misriv!!

you should taste his creations.
And you're right on about the texture.
Flaky!!

Can't wait to use it. So did you make the custardy pie?

And thanks to Chef Pete Vazquez for allowing misriv to post your crust recipe!

FWIW I do pastry always and only by weight, and this might be the only one I don't use the metric system for! ...

If you use volume meas., it'll still work as the ratios are the same....

3 lbs flour...2 lbs. butter...1 lb. water.


I LOVE the technical aspects of pastry, and if you learn to and start doing things by weight, you'll find doing things such as dividing by thirds and a splitting 3 eggs in half gets a hundred times faster as you're always dealing with whole numbers.

For cutting in, flaking it in by hand will give you a flakier crust.....cutting the butter in with a machine will give you a tighter, crumblier crust. I use both and I ONLY use butter (no nasty shortening!) that's waaaay cold. Keep water ice cold too.

I find it noteworthy that only three basic ingredients are used in this recipe…flour, butter and water… to make this superb pie crust. It’s rare to find a good recipe that uses minimum ingredients like this. There are two things illustrated here: 1) the end result doesn’t always need a page full of ingredients to be good 2) the right technique is very important. It’s obvious this recipe has evolved from experienced hands. Thanks Chef PeteV for your recipe and technique. Thanks misriveria for this topic.

Thanks Pete and Miss. I learned alot in a little time.

My butter was kinda frozen so it worked up well. Two people said it was the best pie and crust they ever had.

Ok, so the engineer in me compels me to respond. Unless the density of flour, butter and water are the same the ratios will not be the same as measured by volume and weight. I'm not saying the recipe won't work either way, just that the ratios will be different.

And we can be pretty sure that the densities are different since butter floats in water. SO... yeah, I'm gonna get hit for this but it's the truth, bring it on...

btw Pete, just finished the last my my loot from last Sunday. The mac n cheese over kentucky bbq was outstanding as was the bacon profiterole.

I'm saying the ratio of 3,2,1 will work with EITHER sytem of measurement you use, but you can't mix them.

Pound of feathers/pound of lead vs. Cup of feathers/cup of lead..... That's why I only use weight....it negates the importance of density


thanks Larry! I ate the mac cold and was really happy how it came out.