Fix my quiche dough

Didn't you see the last quiche thread? SF doesn't like it, it's too french.

Can't you just use a regular pie dough? I think that's what my local bakery does.

Definitely don't use a food processor. What you want is little bits of butter spread all the way through it, so that it's flaky.

This is what I do:
1 cup pastry flour
1/4 cup bread flour
pinch of salt
4 oz butter, cold cold cold cold cold cold cold butter
2-6 teaspoons of ice water, this part depends on the humidity in the room and other things. Just have to go by feel and sight.

So combine the flour and salt in a bowl or on the table. Add the butter using the "cut-in" method, which just means break it up by your hands until the entire mix resembles coarse meal. That's how small the butter pieces should be. Try to do this quickly, so the mix stays cold. If the butter melts, which it will since you're a man and have warmer hands than your wife, you're fuxxxored.
It should look like this:



Gradually add the ice water. Just a small amount at first. This is a pretty dry dough, you just want to add enough water until the dough just forms a ball. As soon as it does, wrap it in plastic and flatten it into a disk. Toss it in the refrigerator to chill for at the very least 20 minutes. This is one of the most important steps and the thing that most people skip, I think. Roll it out and should be fine.


Adding more water shouldn't help w/ the cracking. Maybe you've worked up too much gluten in it. You don't want to play around with this dough too much. As soon as it forms into a ball, get it in the fridge, and don't mess arond with it anymore than you have to to roll it out later.

I make quiches pretty often and of all the the things I make from scratch, I have to say that this is the sort of thing I just buy from the supermarket. Making a pie shell is a real pain and hard to get right and time consuming, etc, etc. I'd rather bake fresh bread then make a pie shell. Seriously, for $4.99 for two of them, I'd just buy it. And, of all the compliments I get for my various sweet or savory pie shell + something dishes, I have a nagging suspicion it has something to do with the store-bought shell...