Jenny Viele's Pie Crust

This recipe was passed down from my great grandmother Mary Jane (Jenny) Viele (1866 - 1956).

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• A rounded 1/2 cup shortening (it helps to chill the shortening)
• 5 - 6 tablespoons COLD water
• pinch salt
• pinch sugar

NOTE: The trick to pie crusts is keeping them chilled. Remember, working the crust warms it up.

Cut the flour with the shortening (that is, mix it up with a fork or pastry cutter in chopping motions). Add salt and sugar. Add cold water. Mix the water into the dough with your hands until the mixture cleans the side of the bowl. Divide into two balls.

Roll it out between two sheets of waxed paper. Get it very, very thin. Makes two crusts.

(My mother, Betty Mae (Viele) MacMillan (1937 - 2016), from whom I got this recipe, used Crisco shortening. I suspect that the original shortening was lard, but I have never tried that.)