Quote:
Originally Posted by beppe
From my copy of the Purity Cooking Book . Standard Quebec families cook book.
Pate a Tarte Purity (Pie crust)
1 3/4 cup of flour
3/4 cup of shortening
+salt (3/4 teaspoon) and cold water (4 to 5 spoons)
1.75 to .75 is the ratio. If you understand better integers it is 7 to 3 which makes 2.3 (periodical) if one can manage floating point arithmetic. This confirms the original post and your mental calculation. I used this formula many times. Only caution is not to work it too much, to keep the texture light. I use two knifes or very little pulses of my kitchen robot. Stop tormenting it when all the flour has been caught by the shortening lumps. Then I make a rough ball and fridge it. Than I divide it in two and lay it out with a rolling pin. I keep it as cold as I can all the time. I use sparkling water (7Up actually was the tradition in my wife's family: she had a plastic rolling pin that could be frozen in advance, the smart one, she might still have that for what I know).
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That's pretty much the ratio I use when making a pie crust (but I use butter, not shortening). I like the 7up idea, I might give that a try! Sometimes, I add a bit of sugar to my crust dough.