Brown Butter Pie Crust
Learn how to make Brown Butter Pie Crust in this easy step by step tutorial. You can use this brown butter pie crust for any pie recipe that calls for a butter pie crust!
If you love pie as much as I do, be sure to check out some of my other favorite pie recipes like Brown Sugar Honey Apple Pie, Sourdough Apple Pie, Vanilla Bean Apple Pie, Honey Lemon Apple Pie, Rustic Sourdough Peach Galette, or Caramel Apple Pie.
A Quick Look At The Recipe
- Recipe Name: Brown Butter Pie Crust
- Ready In: 4 hours 20 minutes
- Makes: 1 double crust, 2 bottom crusts (or galettes) or 6 mini pies
- Main Ingredients: butter, cane sugar, all purpose flour
- Flavor Profile: rich, nutty, buttery and full of subtle caramel notes
- Dietary Info: no seed oils, eggless
- Difficulty: Easy!
- Why You’ll Love It: brings so much more complexity and character to apple, pecan, fruit, or chocolate pies
Summarize & Save This Content On
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- 3 Ingredients: This recipe only has 3 ingredients, well 2 really, because water really doesn’t count! All you need is salted butter and all purpose flour.
- Easy: This recipe is just as easy as making my traditional pie crust in How to Make Pie Crust in a Mixer with just the addition of browning the butter. So, if you are familiar with making pie crust you can easily make this recipe!
- So Much Flavor: The addition of brown butter adds so much flavor to this pie crust! It adds a nutty, sweet, and caramelized element that goes so well with apples, pecans, chocolate and more.
- Use for Any Pie: You can use this Brown Butter Pie Crust for any pie recipe that calls for a butter pie crust. This recipe will make a traditional double crust (top crust and bottom crust) or you can split the dough in half and get two bottom only crusts or two galettes.
- Make Ahead: This is a great recipe to make ahead of time. You can even freeze this if you want to prep more than 2 days in advance. Make sure you allow 24 hours for thaw time if you freeze.
If you’re new to brown butter, let me introduce you. Brown butter is like regular butter’s better looking older brother. Like damn… how did I not know about you? Haha! Brown butter is the process of heating regular butter until the milk solids brown (or caramelize). This creates a nutty, toasted, and caramelized flavor that brings so much depth to baked goods.
I have an entire post dedicated to How to Make Brown Butter. So, if you’re new to this process head over there for all the information, tips, and tricks to this magical ingredient. This recipe for Brown Butter Pie Crust, takes classic all butter pie crust o the next level, simply by browning the butter. This creates a speckled pie crust that’s flecked with browned butter’s famous toasted milk solids for so much flavor in your pie!
Ingredients
- Butter: The quality of your butter really matters in something like pie crust because it’s all about the butter! So splurge for the good stuff. Check out my post Best Salted Butter for Baking where I list my top picks.
- All Purpose Flour: My favorite is Cairnspring Mills and it’s what I’m using here.
- Water: You’ll need cold water, which helps create a buttery, flaky crust.
*For a full list of ingredients and measurements, visit the recipe card below.
Baker’s Tips
- Always weigh ingredients for the best results.
- If you are new to browning butter, check out my tutorial How to Make Brown Butter for a more in depth guide and longer video on this process.
- I use a stand mixer to make the pie crust, but you can just use a bowl and your hands. If you are using this method, you just want to squish the butter chunks and flour together with your hands until it looks like wet sand, then add in the water and mix to form a dough. If you have kitchen gloves, it really helps if you are doing this by hand.
- You can use this brown butter pie crust in place of any butter pie crust in any recipe to give it more flavor!
- This is a 2 day process, so keep that in mind. It’s best to make the brown butter, let it sit overnight to chill because we need to have chilled butter for the pie crust. Then make the pie dough, let it sit overnight to chill. Then roll out the pie. Keep this is mind if you are planning for a holiday.
- This is the perfect amount of pie dough for a 9-inch pie plate. It makes enough for a double crust. Of it makes two bottom crusts for pies like pumpkin pie where are par-baking the crust, if you only need one bottom crust, just freeze the other one for later.
- If you want to freeze this Brown Butter Pie Crust, you can do that. Just pop the plastic wrapped dough in the freezer. Thaw them for 24 hours in the fridge before you plan to roll out the pie.
How to Make Brown Butter Pie Crust
- To brown the butter: Add the butter to a 3-quart pot and put over low/medium heat. Allow the butter to melt then stir while it cooks until it turns a golden brown color with small brown specs or brown bits. It may bubble up, if that happens, just remove from heat for a moment until it calms down so you can keep an eye on the color as it can happen quickly at this stage. Once the butter is browned, remove from the heat.
- Transfer the butter to a Tupperware that’s lined with parchment paper. Lining the Tupperware with parchment paper will help remove it easier once it’s cooled and I highly recommend doing this step.
- Allow the butter to chill in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours or overnight until it’s solid.
- Remove it from the Tupperware and weigh the butter. It should be 170 grams, but if you have more you can save that little extra for cinnamon sugar toast, waffles, or pancakes. Chop the 170 grams of cold butter into small cubes.
- Add to a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.
- Add in the flour and mix on low until the mixture looks like wet sand. Immediately add in the cold water and mix just until combined.
- Do not over mix, you can finish mixing with your hands. If you see large pieces of butter just squish them between your fingers to combine.
- Depending on what kind of pie you are baking, you can divide the dough accordingly. If you’re making a traditional double crust, then divide the dough into two pieces, the bottom weighing 326 grams and the top 184 grams. If you’re doing two galettes or two bottom only pie crusts, then divide the dough in half equally, which is about 255 grams each. Form each piece of dough into a round disc and wrap in plastic wrap.
- Store in the fridge for at least 24 hours before rolling out, but don’t leave it longer than 48 hours. If you want to make pie dough in advance of 48 hours, then you can freeze it at this stage. Then just thaw in the fridge for up to 24 hours before rolling out.
What kind of pies to bake with brown butter pie crust?
Brown butter adds a nutty, sweet, and caramelized flavor to the crust. This goes so well with so many pie fillings! Try my Brown Butter Apple Pie Without Eggs or Lattice Spiced Apple Pie recipes. It also goes really well with pecans, you can use this pie crust recipe in my Honey Pecan Pie or Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie. And, pumpkin pie is great, try it in my Chocolate Pumpkin Pie Without Eggs or Eggless Sourdough Pumpkin Pie.
I also recommend this with any kind of stone fruit — peaches, apricots, or plums also pair very well with this. And, berries are also great with this too! Try Eggless Mini Apricot Pies and Honey Almond Plum Galette Without Eggs.
Recipe FAQ’s
Yes, you can! The only thing to remember is when you brown butter, the volume reduces a bit as the milk solids toast. So, you need to brown more butter to get the amount of brown butter needed for pie crust. You also need to ensure that you chill the brown butter before making pie crust with it.
Brown butter adds a little sweet, nutty and caramelized flavor to your butter, which then enhances pie crust as pie crust is made up of mostly butter. This makes it taste more elevated and like something you'd get at a bakery!
While traditional pie crust is delicious and one of my favorite things, doing this extra step of browning the butter really takes the pie crust to another level. If you love rich, caramel notes in your baked goods, then this is totally worth the extra step!
You can, but I prefer the taste with salted butter. If using unsalted, you can add a little pinch (about 1/4 teaspoon) of salt to the butter as it browns.
Yes, you don't need a mixer. You can simply mix up the dough by hand, it will just take a few extra minutes. You can also use a pastry cutter, if you have one, that can help too.
Brown butter needs to chill before making pie crust because butter needs to be cold for pie crust. Cold butter is what creates that flaky pie crust because as the cold butter bakes in the oven its water content evaporates and creates steam. This is what creates the flaky texture that everyone knows and loves. So, chilling is essential.
Over mixing pie dough can cause it to be dough. Or, warm butter can also cause this as well. If you are new to rolling out pie and it takes you a bit longer, that's okay!. But after you roll out the dough, place it in the pie pan and then in the fridge for 15 to 30 minutes before adding the filling. This is always how I taught new bakers at my bakery, because if you are not fast at rolling out pie crust, it will become warm and your pie will suffer. But, placing it in the fridge to chill back up before baking helps tremendously. Try this trick!
If your pie crust seems warm, the dough seems really sticky and you don't see little pockets of cold butter, then you over mixed it.
I only like to keep pie dough in the fridge for 24 to 48 hours. If you aren't going to roll it out after that time, then you should freeze it until you are ready. While many people say you can keep pie crust in the fridge longer, I have tested this (trust me extensively when I had my bakery!), and I think the texture begins to get weird after 48 hours. It's not ideal. So, if you won't roll it out the next day, just freeze it!
Yes, of course. This goes really well with savory veggies, and even chicken such as in chicken pot pie. You can remove the sugar from the pie crust though, you don't need it for savory dishes.
Yes, you can make pie crust weeks in advance and freeze it. Just freeze the wrapped pie crust. You can freeze pie crust for up to 3 months. Simply place in the fridge 24 hours before you plan to roll out the pie.
This brown butter pie crust goes well with so many pies because of it's caramelized, nutty flavor. Try it with apple pie, peach pie, pecan pie or pumpkin pie!
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Brown Butter Pie Crust
Equipment
- Digital Food Scale
- 3-Quart Pot
- Stand Mixer (optional)
Ingredients
- 226 grams salted butter
- 255 grams all purpose flour
- ½ cup cold water
Instructions
- To brown the butter: Add the butter to a 3-quart pot and put over low/medium heat. Allow the butter to melt then stir while it cooks until it turns a golden brown color with small brown specs or brown bits. It may bubble up, if that happens, just remove from heat for a moment until it calms down so you can keep an eye on the color as it can happen quickly at this stage. Once the butter is browned, remove from the heat.
- Transfer the butter to a Tupperware that’s lined with parchment paper. Lining the Tupperware with parchment paper will help remove it easier once it’s cooled and I highly recommend doing this step.
- Allow the butter to chill in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours or overnight until it’s solid.
- Remove it from the Tupperware and weigh the butter. It should be 170 grams, but if you have more you can save that little extra for cinnamon sugar toast, waffles, or pancakes.
- Chop the 170 grams of cold butter into small cubes. Add to a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.
- Add in the flour and mix on low until the mixture looks like wet sand. Immediately add in the cold water and mix just until combined. Do not over mix, you can finish mixing with your hands. If you see large pieces of butter just squish them between your fingers to combine.
- Depending on what kind of pie you are baking, you can divide the dough accordingly. If you’re making a traditional double crust, then divide the dough into two pieces, the bottom weighing 326 grams and the top 184 grams. If you’re doing two galettes or two bottom only pie crusts, then divide the dough in half equally, which is about 255 grams each. Form each piece of dough into a round disc and wrap in plastic wrap.
- Store in the fridge for at least 24 hours before rolling out, but don’t leave it longer than 48 hours. If you want to make pie dough in advance of 48 hours, then you can freeze it at this stage. Then just thaw in the fridge for up to 24 hours before rolling out.
Video
Notes
- Always weigh ingredients for the best results.
- If you are new to browning butter, check out my tutorial How to Make Brown Butter for a more in depth guide and longer video on this process.
- I use a stand mixer to make the pie crust, but you can just use a bowl and your hands. If you are using this method, you just want to squish the butter chunks and flour together with your hands until it looks like wet sand, then add in the water and mix to form a dough. If you have kitchen gloves, it really helps if you are doing this by hand.
- You can use this brown butter pie crust in place of any butter pie crust in any recipe to give it more flavor!
- This is a 2 day process, so keep that in mind. It’s best to make the brown butter, let it sit overnight to chill because we need to have chilled butter for the pie crust. Then make the pie dough, let it sit overnight to chill. Then roll out the pie. Keep this is mind if you are planning for a holiday.
- This is the perfect amount of pie dough for a 9-inch pie plate. It makes enough for a double crust. Of it makes two bottom crusts for pies like pumpkin pie where are par-baking the crust, if you only need one bottom crust, just freeze the other one for later.
- If you want to freeze this Brown Butter Pie Crust, you can do that. Just pop the plastic wrapped dough in the freezer. Thaw them for 24 hours in the fridge before you plan to roll out the pie.
- High Altitude — Follow the recipe as noted.
Nutrition
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This pie crust has so much depth of flavor, and it can be used for any pie! I want to make every single pie with this crust, it’s so good!