Vegan olive oil pie crust

Avoid the nightmares of holiday pastry-making with this simple, vegan dough recipe.

Vegan olive oil pie crust

With holidays fast approaching, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and make your pie dough. We found this Olive Oil Double Crust recipe in Vegan Pie in the Sky (Lifelong Books, 2011), by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. Not only do these queens of vegan baking give you the pie dough basics, their vegan cookbook delivers 75 out-of-this-world recipes for pies, tarts, cobblers, and more. Grab this book and you’ll have a tasty array of vegan desserts to deliciously surprise your holiday guests.

Moskowitz and Romero say, “This has become our go-to crust. Olive oil produces a light, flaky crust with a surprisingly neutral taste. The secret is to place the olive oil in the freezer beforehand, so that it becomes partically solid. This helps the fat blend into the dough in little pockets, creating the flakiness you crave.”

Makes 1 (9-inch) top and bottom crust

Ingredients:

• 2-1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup olive oil, partially frozen
• 4 to 8 tablespoons ice water
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Directions:

1. To prepare the olive oil, about an hour before beginning the recipe, place the olive oil in a plastic container. For best results, use a thin, light container, like the kind used for takout food. Freeze the oil until it’s opaque and congealed but still somewhat soft, like the consistency of slightly melted sorbet.
2. In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour and salt. Working quickly, add the olive oil by the tablespoonful, cutting it into the flour with your fingers or a pastry cutter, until the flour appears pebbly.
3. In a cup, mix together 4 tablespoons water with apple cider vinegar. Drizzle 2 tablespoons of the vinegar mixture into the dough and stir, using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula. Add more water a tablespoon at a time, until the dough holds together to form a soft ball. Do not overknead the dough.
4. Divide the dough in two. Press each half into a disk about an inch thick and place each disk between two 14-inch long pieces of waxed paper. Using a rolling pin, roll each piece into a circel about 1/4-inch thick. For a more even, uniform circle, roll the pin one or two strokes outward, turn the dough a few degrees, and roll a few times again and repeat. Repeat with the other half of the dough.
5. Refrigerate the rolled dough wrapped in waxed paper until it’s ready to use, or as directed in the recipe.

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